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DESQUAMATION OF THE SKIN.

of the hinder extremities, and the formation of blackish pustules under the tongue: eventually the skin usually comes off in patches. The measles in swine is seldom fatal, and will gradually yield to the simplest cooling treatment, or even to mere attention to diet, temperature, and ventilation. Didyinus tells us that Democrates prescribed bruised asphodile roots to be mingled with the food given to hogs, as an excellent remedy for this disease. It sadly injures the quality of the meat, rendering it insipid, flabby, pale, and indisposed to take the salt. We should say that the flesh of measly pigs is positively unwholesome, although, perhaps, there are no cases on record in which it is proved that bad effects have resulted from the use of it.

The following was a remedy for this disorder used by the ancients: "A hog having measles must be put in a sty and kept there three days and nights without food. Then take five or six apples, pick out the cores and fill up the holes thus made with flour of brimstone; stop up the holes and cast in the apples to the measly hog. Give him first one or two, then one or two more, and then, as being hungry he will eat them, give him all. Let him have nothing more to eat until the next day, and then serve him so again. Thus use him for five or six days, and he will become as well and as wholesome as ever." In our opinion it is one very likely to be beneficial.

It yet remains to be discovered whether measles in swine is an epidemic, like that disorder in the human being, or whether it is hereditary, or whether, as many suppose, it arises from the development and presence of a variety of the cysticercus.

DESQUAMATION OF THE SKIN.

The following singular case, communicated to The Veterinarian, by Mr. J. Sherwood, of Sittingbourn, appears to us not unworthy of record here.

"A few weeks ago the skin became hard on either side about nine or ten inches from the spine, and afterwards kept gradually separating towards the centre of the spine from the shoulder to the insertion of the tail. The bailiff cut off portions from time to time of the weight of nearly 10 lbs. in order to make the load with which the animal was encumbered the lighter, until the last week, when the hog lay down, and after taking his rest with his brethren (for he fed and looked as well as the rest, with the exception of the load on his back) he got up and left the substance behind him. It consisted of the entire skin so far as it had sloughed, with about two inches of adeps adhering to it in the middle, getting gradually thinner towards the sides, and weighing 20 lbs., which, added to the portions before removed, made a total of 30 lbs. The hog is now computed to weigh 400 lbs. He had not any medicine administered, as he did well the whole of the time."