BELLADONNA IN THE STABLE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 173, 3 September 1879, Page 3

BELLADONNA IN THE STABLE.

The veterinary surgeon of tin Detiv : ‘Post’ Ha great believer in be A, Amm o and so arc we. His views on thr subjre! are very interesting : —Atropa bcl 1 a ■ i ■ mna the clcadlv nightshade, is very common in Europe, but not naturalized AAmerca. All parts of the plant yro narcoy,., and the berries, which are like blaeic cherries, arc very attractive, often fatally so to children. It owes its poisonous quality to the presence of an alkaloid calico a trephine, which exist* in the plant in combination with malic acid. Belladonna is much used in medicine to allay pain and- spasmodic action. The homoeopaths • use it as a specific in scarlatina. It Helms; s dilation of the pupil of the eye. ’ In Veterinary practice tor influenza, sore throat, severe colds, inflammation of the hums and the like, this is a valuable remedy. Inflammation of almost any part of the eye is reliovetUy belladonna. Dose of the dried leaves, two ounces ; -of the extract; one to two drachms. For a Horse ton drops of a mixture of live drains of athrophia to an ounce of water is a -proper dose—-place on the tongue or admini&ter with hypodermic syringe. The time was when aconite and belladonna were the main remedies of hdmecopathic practice. They should be in every stable, but closely confined and . .carefully marked. Again we quote from Kendall :—“ Wo once beard it remarked bv an eminent professor of materia meclica that if he was compelled to combat with disease with cither opium alone, or all of the remaining drugs in ise without the opium, lie would choose the opium three times a day. The cow on wet food trained in condition. The other one lost. In «lm> *«*» tm ‘ cows consumed the forty-two pounds or smut; they had a voracious appetite the whole time, and the only indication of a peculiar diet was a very black colour of the excrement and the of nutritious diet, which, however, was in a dry state. Further investigat'd! with the cows revealed the fact, howevei, that many which were turned into corn fields c ]i P( l_ llo t from eating the smut, but the dry stalks, which became impacted in the third stomach, the food caking between its folds and becoming dry and * crisp, by which means it completely stopped up the passages ami produced death. The remedy is to allow the patient to eat plenty of soft food with the stalks, for when dead ripe they are nothing but a mass of woody fibre, with nutriment almost wholly gone, are hard to digest, and almost sure to impact. Smut aggravates the trouble, but is not the cause of the disaster. Dried grass and leaves also have a lenocncy when taken into the stomach to mat in the same way, and many valuable animals a re yearly lost from this cause.