BLAIN, BLACK TONGUE. This is a dis ease varying in its form, and known under vari ous names, as charbon (a coal) of the French, con tagious anthrax of the English, and under various names in England and America, as black quarter, black tongue, bloody murrain and quarter ail. When it attacks the tongue, it is called blain; when in the throat, it assumes the form of putrid sore throat, or malignant sore throat. When the intestines are attacked, it is bloody murrain. When the spleen is attacked, it may assume the form of apoplexy of the spleen, or splenic fever; so, also, it may take on the form of inflammatory fever, which assuming a low typhoid form, ends in death. If malignant inflammation attacks the internal organs, the disease becomes anthrax fever, or, as stated before, bloody murrain, with bloody urine, bloody effusions from the nose, eyes and ears, which if prompt relief be not given, carries off the animal within one or two days. In its malignant forms, every portion of the ani mal carries deadly contagion with it, even to other animals, and man. It is a blood-poison ing. No fully successful treatment has ever been discovered; hence the cheapest and most merciful treatment (except in the case of partic ularly valuable cattle, where sure means of inso lation may be had) is to kill and then bury the carcass deeply in the ground. In ordinary cases of murrain, a change to high, dry pastures will often effect a cure. When the disease, in any of its epidemic forms appear, the germsof the disease 'should be arrested by fumigating the quarters of the animals afflicted, with sul phur and tar, in the proportion of one pound of sulphur to two quarts of pure tar. Saturate tow with the mixture, and burn so it may thoroughly smoke the building. (See Fumigation.) In all forms of this disease, bleeding, purging, and all so-called heroic treatment is worse than useless, and all local applications to "kill" the swell ings and ulcers are injurious. The idea is to
divest the blood of its poison; it is the true one. Put a seton in the dewlap (a coarse tape an inch wide and twelve or more inches long), smeared with powdered cantharides and turpentine, each one part, and eight parts balsam of fir. The two should stand together in a vessel of warm water for two hours, when the balsam may be added. The seton should be put in at the first symptoms of the disease. Probably the best method of treating the disease internally is by giving one or even two drachms of quinine every two or three hours in severe cases, with hypodermic in every hour, of the following solution : wo grains of iodine, five grains of iodide of potassium, and one ounce of water. Use a syringe full in severe cases. In very severe cases this may be thrown directly into a vein, but hypoder mic treatment must be performed by a veteri narian or a physician. In ordinary treatment the vesicles or pustules should be opened and swabbed with a solution of twenty grains,,of chloride of zinc, an ounce of water, or in' this proportion ; or, touch them with nitrate of silver, or even the hot iron One ounce each of chloride of potash and sulphite of soda, in one or two quarts of water, should also be given two or three times a 'lay. As a stimulant especially useful, two to four drachms carbonate of ammonia dissolved in half a tumblerful of whisky, and diluted with two tumblerfuls of water should be given sev eral times a day, as occasion may seem to require, by allowing it to trickle slowly down the throat from a bottle or horn. (See article Murrain.)