pour the water on the leaves, cover up the vessel, and keep it in a warm place for six or eight hours, then strain.
Two tea-spoonfuls morning and evening may be given to a sheep, but as the plant is an active poison, and the strength of its infusion liable to vary, a couple of days should always intervene between every six doses.
About the year 1800, a notion prevailed in this country, that an effectual remedy for rot had been discovered by the Dutch, but this was quite unfounded, no _cure_ ever having been hit upon for this sweeping malady; indeed, a cure is fairly out of the question: its prevention and palliation, but not its eradication, being all that we can hope for. Sundry plausible plans of treatment have, however, at one time or another been contrived, some of them, in all conscience, harmless enough, but others again as well adapted for the destruction of the animal, as the removal of the disease.
As fluke worms have usually been reckoned the cause of rot, so the treatment has principally consisted in attempts to effect their extermination. With this view, Sir George Steuart Mackenzie of Coule, in defiance of all preconceived medical opinion, advocated, in his work on _Sheep_, published in 1809, the employment of mercury to stay the progress of rot, and in the same work, _or one very like it_, as lately published anonymously by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, under the title of the _Mountain Shepherd's Manual_, the utility of this dangerous procedure is as firmly maintained. At the same time Sir George, though rather in the dark as to the real nature of the disease, admits, in both editions, that tubercles exist in rot, especially in the lungs. Now, if he had inquired of any medical person what drug ought, when tubercles are present, of all others to be avoided, he would have found that medicine to be mercury. The administration of it therefore in rot, no matter what may be the form or mode in which it is exhibited, will to a certainty aggravate the symptoms, and shorten life. If, for the sake of doing something, you will _endeavour_ to remove the worms, Chabert's animal oil will be found a safe and efficacious remedy; but, if my opinion can have any weight, I would recommend the farmer to allow them to remain.