LIVER-ROT, or FLUKE DISEASE. A disease of sheep, due to the presence, in the liver and biliary ducts, of a fat worm (Distoma hcpati cum) or fluke, which often causes very heavy losses in sheep-raising countries. It also oc casionally attacks rabbits, hares, deer, and cattle. Autumn and early winter are the periods of its most frequent occurrence. Close, damp weather, inducing a rapid growth of soft, luxu riant herbage, favors its development ; low, damp, marshy situations, water-meadows, and undrained lands furnish a large proportion of cases, and sheep grazed upon such land, or taking a single draught from an infected, stagnant pool, may contract the disorder by swallowing the young flukes. The hay from such localities in duces rot almost as readily as the fresh grass. From fifteen to forty days usually elapse before any serious consequences follow from the presence of the parasite. At first, indeed, digestion ap pears to be stimulated, and the sheep thrive rather better than before; but by and by they waste, their wool becomes dry and easily detached, their bowels irregular, their skin and mucous membranes yellow, as is usually con veniently observed by examining the eye and its pearly caruncle. The body, after death, is soft, flaccid, and indifferently nourished ; watery ef fusions are discovered underneath the jaws and in other dependent parts; the small quantities of unabsorbed fat are dirty yellow; the liver is soft and enlarged, and usually mottled with patches of congestion. In the thick and muddy bile, the flukes, with their myriads of spawn, float in variable numbers.
The treatment of liver-rot is so seldom satis factory that if the animals, when first affected, are in tolerable condition, no time should lie lost in having them slaughtered. If remedial meas
ures are attempted, the sheep should he removed to a dry situation, and liberally supplied with dry, nutritive food. During the summer, feed grain with the grass; during the winter, when cases are most frequent, supply clover-hay, peas, or.vplit beans, a little bruised linseed cake, and a few roots; pieces of rock salt should also be laid about the ground for the patients to lick. Medicines are seldom of much avail. Those most to be relied on are turpentine and powdered gentian in two-dram doses, given daily, beaten up with an egg and a little milk, or with sonic lin seed gruel. The turpentine, besides acting bene ficially as a stimulant, doubtless also exercises a poisonous action on the flukes, while the gentian imparts tone to the irritated and relaxed bowels. The prevention of liver-rot is usually effected by removing from the land all superfluous moisture by deep and thorough drainage. Where pastures are suspected of infestation, beans and oats should for a time be fed in moderate quantity, and access allowed to rock salt. The reason for avoiding inundated or marshy localities is that the immature form of the liver-fluke, after pass ing its preliminary stages in the bodies of water snails, attaches itself to grass and other plants in such places, and thus gains entrance to the sheep along with the forage. See FLUKE; TRE 3IATODA.