William Charles L. Martin
Published: 2012-10
Total Pages: 108
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III ON THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. In our account of the diseases of the sheep, it will be our aim to simplify the details as much as possible, so as to render them useful to the farmer who possesses no accurate anatomical knowledge. We would here advise the farmer to beware of the nostrums of the farrier, and in all serious cases to call in the veterinary surgeon, by whom all important operations ought to be performed, if only for the sake of humanity, inasmuch as his knowledge and manual dexterity will often save needless sufferings. Without entering into minute anatomical details, there are a few preliminary observations which we cannot avoid, and which will not, we think, be unacceptable. First, with respect to the nervous system.?The brain of the sheep is somewhat larger, in proportion to the size of the animal, than that of the ox?that of the latter being about l-800th part the weight of the animal, that of the sheep about 1-750th; and the proportion between the cortical or cineritious substance of this organ, and the medullary or internal substance, is about the same as in the ox; as is also the relative size of the nerves to that of the brain. In the sheep, the nervous energies are soon exhausted. It is not fitted for labour: it is destined by Providence to yield food and clothing to man; hence it receives no education?it is trained to no employment?it undergoes no discipline. Yet we do not rate the real intelligence of the sheep at a less degree than that of the ox. We have seen domesticated individuals as familiar, as bold, and as sprightly as the goat. Secondly, with respect to the arterial and venous systems. ?We need not particularly describe the heart, which consists of two auricles and two ventricles as usual; but we mayobserve, that the right ven...