The principles and practice of veterinary medicine / by William Williams.

  • William Williams
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles and practice of veterinary medicine / by William Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    54/910 (page 18)
    that honey-dew has been supposed to cause aphthous and other affections. “ Intelligent agriculturists in Saxony have remarked this dew as a cause of epizootics, and the shepherds take the precaution of leaving their crook on the grass in driving home their flocks, and examining it in the morning before driving them out again. If they observe the dew which has gathered on the crook to be only water, the flocks may then be allowed to pasture; but if it resembles oil or honey, then they must remain until the dew has evaporated.” Geological formation ancl locality.—Mr. Eobertson, Kelso, in his little work Hints to Stockowners, says—“ The substrata on which soils rest, and to which in part they owe their formation, is always an important element in determining their character, and one which remains undisturbed in its permanence, notwith- standing cultivation, and the improvements of modern scientific agriculture. From an acquaintance with the nature of this for- mation, we can in many cases predict what will be the character of the stock bred and reared on such lands, as also the dis- eases to which they are more particularly liable, or from wliich they are exempt. For example, it is a fact well known to the majority of our sheep-breeders, that on certain soils, chiefly those resting on the igneous rocks, sheep are liable to suffer from a form of abdominal consumption, known as pining, and that no system of treatment is so efficacious as their removal to soils resting on the sandstone formation. There are also diseases of particular structures of the animal body, as the bones and nervous system—enzootic—that is, confined to circumscribed districts of country, which seem to owe their origin to the redun- dancy or absence in the soil, and materials grown thereon, of certain organic or inorganic materials. These diseases are always difficult of prevention, when only methods of cultivation, or systems of folding the animals on these lands, are adopted. They would require to have access to those situations known to be dangerous only at particular periods, and to have what food is given them from such soils supplemented by others of a very different nature.” In several parts of Scotland, it is well known that stock suffer to an enormous extent in certain pastures during spring, or until the appearance of the white clover. It is difficult to account for this, unless by the supposition that, owing to the geological