Fardel
Categories:
Diseases and their Remedies
This disease is properly known by the name of clue-bound. The manyplus,
or omasum (third stomach), frequently becomes so choked up with food
that it is hard and dry, and the operation of the digestive organs is
very seriously impaired. The animal eats voraciously, for a time, but
stops suddenly and trembles; the countenance assumes a peculiarly
haggard appearance; there is a wild expression of the eye; a foaming at
the
mouth; a tendency to pitch forward, and at times a falling
head-foremost to the ground. Occasionally, the symptoms are very active,
speedily terminating in death. There are few diseases of a
constitutional character in which the stomach is not, more or less,
sympathetically involved.
"Toward the end of September, 1746, a great number of cows died at
Osterwich, in the principality of Halberstadt. Lieberkuhn, a celebrated
physician,--there were no veterinary surgeons at that time,--was sent to
examine into the nature of the disease, which was supposed to be one of
the species of murrain that was then committing such ravages among the
cattle in various parts of the Continent. There were none of the tumors,
or pestilential buboes, that, in an earlier or later period of the
malady, usually accompanied and characterized murrain; but upon
inspection of the dead bodies, considerable peritoneal inflammation was
found; the first and second stomachs were filled with food, but the
third stomach was the palpable seat of the disease; its leaves were
black and gangrened. The mass contained between the leaves was black,
dry, and so hard that it could scarcely be cut with a scalpel. It
intercepted the passage of the food from the first two stomachs to the
fourth; and this latter stomach was empty and much inflamed. Neither the
heart, nor the lungs, nor the intestines exhibited any trace of disease.
Twelve cows were opened, and the appearances were nearly the same in all
of them."
Treatment.--Give one and a half pounds of Epsom-salts, dissolved in
three pints of water; or one quart of potash, three times daily,
dissolved in water, will be found useful in this disease.