A Treatise on Sheep:: The Best Means for their Improvement, General Management, and the Treatment of their Diseases.Blacklock, Ambrose
Science
A Treatise on Sheep:: The Best Means for their Improvement, General Management, and the Treatment of their Diseases.
Blacklock, Ambrose
Sheep
(161.) _Appearances on Dissection._ The first thing which strikes a
person on viewing the carcass of a sheep which has died of rot, is its
leanness. In conducting the examination, the fell appears of a bluish
white, the muscles are pale and wasted, and fat hardly to be met with.
Where it once existed, a tough yellow substance alone remains, which is
so destitute of all pretentions to the name of suet, that it cannot,
even when thrown upon a fire, be made to blaze. Dropsical accumulations
are found in the legs, chest, neck, and belly. On opening the chest,
the lungs are often seen adhering at intervals to the lining membrane
of the ribs, and have always a shrunk, diminutive appearance. These
adhesions are frequently seen where there are no tubercles, and are in
that case simply the result of exposure to cold; but where they are
coincident with tubercles, they may be ascribed either to the animal
having been exposed to cold, or to the inflammatory action set up by
the tubercles themselves. The lungs are always the principal, and I may
also, from my own experience, add, the primary seat of the affection.
When examined in the early stage of rot, they have a hard lumpy feel,
especially at the upper part or lobe, and at this time a great number
of irregular yellowish white, patchy-looking bodies (_Plate_ VI. _fig.
2._), will be seen shining through the membrane, _pleura_, which
surrounds the organ. These _tubercles_, as the hard white bodies are
called, vary in size from that of a mustard seed to that of a pea. They
are sprinkled through all parts of the lung, and will in every
dissection, be found in a variety of stages, from the firm condition in
which they were deposited, to the softened state which denotes their
speedy expectoration. Each tubercle, however small, usually holds a
particle of calcareous matter in its centre. The lungs, in the advanced
stage of rot, will be full of cells or caverns, owing to the
destruction of its texture by suppuration in those parts where
tubercles existed. The cells or sacs are of all sizes, from that of a
bean to that of a goose egg; but if the animal has been taken care of
during the progress of the complaint, and lingered long, the abscesses
will be so numerous, and so closely situated, as to give the remains of
the lung the appearance of a large bag. Extreme cases of this nature
are, however, rare; as the sheep, in general, either falls before the
knife, or is killed from exposure to cold long ere the disease has
reached its farthest limit. These sacs contain purulent matter, of all
shades and odours, and identical with that which the animal coughed up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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