By these terms are implied a preternatural or morbid detention and
hardening of the excrement; a disease to which all animals are subject,
unless proper attention be paid to their management. It mostly arises
from want of exercise, feeding on frosted oats, indigestible matter of
every kind, impure water, &c. Costiveness is often the case of flatulent
and spasmodic colic, and often of inflammation of the bowels.
Mr. Morrill says, "I have always found that the quantity of medicine
necessary to act as an _opiate_ on this dry mass [alluding to that
found in the manyplus and intestines] will kill the animal. If I am
mistaken, I will take it kindly to be set right." You are quite right.
Let us see what Professor J. A. Gallup says, in his Institutes of
Medicine, vol. ii. p. 187. "The practice of giving opiates to mitigate
pain, &c., is greatly to be deprecated; it is not only unjustifiable,
but should be esteemed unpardonable. It is probable that, for forty
years past, opium and its preparations have done _seven times the
injury_ that they have rendered benefit"--killed seven where they have
saved one! Page 298, he calls opium the "most destructive of all
narcotics," and wishes he could "speak through a lengthened trumpet,
that he might tingle the ears" of those who use and prescribe it. All
the opiates used by the allopathists contain more or less of this
poisonous drug. Opiates given with a view of softening mass alluded to
will certainly disappoint those who administer them; for, under the use
of such "palliatives," the digestive powers fail, and a general state of
feebleness and inactivity ensues, which exhausts the vital energies.
It will be found in stretches, that other organs, as well as the
"manyplus," are not performing their part in the business of
physiological or healthy action, and they must be excited to perform
their work; for example, if the food remains in either of the stomachs
in the form of a hard mass, then the surface of the body is evaporating
too much moisture from the general system; the skin should be better
toned. Pure air is one of the best and most valuable of nature's tonics.
Let the flock have pure air to breathe, and sufficient room to use their
limbs, with proper diet, and there will be little occasion for medicine.
_Treatment._--The disease is to be obviated by proper attention to diet,
exercise, and ventilation; and when these fail, to have recourse to
bitter laxatives, injections, and aperients. The use of salts and castor
oil creates a necessity for their repetition, for they overwork the
mucous surfaces, and their delicate vessels lose their natural
sensibility, and become torpid. Scalded shorts are exceedingly valuable
in this complaint, as also are boiled carrots, parsnips, &e.