Cattle 1853 - Lewis Family Farm

HEitNIA, OR RUPTURE. 361
bined ; purgative medicine being still occasionally given. Half an
ounce of nitre, with a quarter of an ounce each of tartrate of iron,
commom liquid turpentine, gentian, and ginger, may be given daily
with great advantage. Bran and malt mashes will be useful at first,
and when the beast goes again to grass, care should be taken that
the pasture is good, but not too luxuriant or rank. In general, some
weakness and disinclination to food will remain two or three days
after the operation, attended at first by considerable heaving, and
apparent distress, for it is a great change from the tumid and overloaded
belly to the perfectly free and natural state of its contents,
and which do not at once accommodate themselves to that change.
The belly so frequently fills again after the lapse of two or three
weeks, that it will be prudent to part with a eow that has been drop-
sical as soon as she can be got into tolerable condition. The exhibition
of diuretic and tonic medicines will, perhaps, stave off the return
of the disease until this can be accomplished ; but the organs of
digestion have been so debilitated, and these exhalent and absorbent
vessels have been so habituated to an unnatural action, that a perfect
and permanent restoration to health can seldom be expected. A
second operation may be attempted if the belly has filled again, but
the chances of success are then most materially diminished.
There is scarcely a book on cattle medicine in which, if this disease
be mentioned at all, there is not strict caution that the beast should
not have too much water. This is altogether erroneous. The object
to be accomplished is to restore the animal as nearly as possible to a
state of health; and this can never be effected* by curtailing the
proportion of fluid that is necessary for the maceration and digestion
of the food, and the supply of all the secretions. A state of unnatural
thirst and fever would, on the contrary, be induced, which
would weaken the animal, and dispose it for a recurrence of the
disease.
HomcBopaihic treatment.—The remedies employed in this affection,
and in the order in which they are here enumerated, are dulcamara,
digitalis, helleborus niger, arsenicum, and china ; to each some days
should be allowed, in order to expend their action. It is on the
china principally that reliance should be placed. _ In one case, where
all means failed, benefit was derived from lycopodium, whose action
may be said to be very powerful in internal dropsies. Ascites
complicated with anasarca ha.s been cured solely by alternate doses
of china and arsenicum, a mode of proceeding which experience warrants
recommending.
HERNIA, OR RUPTURE.
A portion of the intestine occasionally protrudes through the walls
of the abdomen. This may be the consequence of external violence,
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