The northern tribune. [volume] (Bath, Me.) 1847-1855, 1848-01-03
BATH, MONDAY MORNING, JANUARY 8, ls4s.
Management of Cattle-Health.

Il was brought up to the severe labor Of
cultivating poor soil. have sown many
ton of plaster with my own hands and many
moonshiny night have followed the plough
that an OK team might escape the heat of June
in breaking up large summer fallows. linen
ton these personal incidents as an apology for
claiming to know something of the practice as
we'll as little of the science of rural economy.
=" Permit, thnn, practical agriculturist,
who has devoted the best energies of his mind
for years to the study of agricultural chemis-
try, vegetable and animal physiology, to say
to those of you who are wool. grow ers, that
by keeping the animal warm in winter, cool in
summer, and quiet throughout the year, by
slim ulatng with the elements Of wool, the or
gans that secrete this valuable covering of the
sheep it is practicable to clip six pounds OF
wool as the product from the same amount and
value of raw material that now yield you but
three pounds. To accomplish this important
result, this physiological change in the pro-
ducts of thus living machine. you must quiet
the action of the lungs. These expel from
the system every moment, night and day, a
needless quantity of animal food, which under
more favorable and other circumstances, might
have been converted into wool, tallow and
muscle.
Mark me. There is positive loss, need
less throwing away, of 20 to so per cent of
the food in wintering all domestic animals,
which is literally burned up by nature, in this
cold climate, to keep their blood, and the
whole animal some 10 or so degrees warmer
than the temperature of the air with which
they are surrounded. 1t is not merely the
hay, oa.s and corn in domestic animals, and
the bread and meat in man, which are con-
sumed like the animal oil in a lamp to warm
the system that are lost; but by inhaling a
solid and dense atmosphere, and bringing a
larger amount of oxygen gas into the lungs,
and through them into the blood than is need
ed, intlammations are generally ending in con-
sumption alike in man and beast
g An animal is an electrical battery or ma
chine. 1t is practicable 80 to excite the or
gans that form fat in pig, in a positive de-
gree, and to SO quiet all the other organs of
the animal by kind 'of negative electricity,
that the animal shall transform nearly all of
its food that can be converted into fat, into
that we'll known substance. The same re-
marks will hold true, in a good degree, when
applied to the secretion of milk in cows, and
the secretion of wool in the capillary organs of
the sheep. On the other hand, it is quite as
easy to make a pig secrete an enormous
amount of bone, and an enormous amount of
gristle, to have hide as thick as a board, a
nose like plough beam, ears like sides Of sole
leather, and legs like an elephant.
OF all the complicated machinery in warm
blooded animals, the action Of the lungs is the
most important. 1t governs the action of the
heart and that of the digestive organs. And
the action of the lungs is governed, in good
degree, by the condensation from the cold and
expansion from the heat of the air taken into
them by respiration. The condensation and
expansion ever varies the quantity of oxygen
that passes through the lungs into the circu-
lating blood. Hence it is, that in cold eli
mates and in cold seasons of the year, this ex-
cess of oxygen excites inhammatory diseases.
Hence it is, that in warm climates and in warm
seasons of the year when the minimum of OK
ygen is taken into the system, less carbonic
gas is expelled from the lungs, and excess of
carbon in the food, being the principal ele-
ments of bile as well as fat stimulates the liv-
er, an important organ and the antagonist OF
the lungs, to a copious and undue secretion of
bile. Thus it is that the human race and do
nestle animals partake of the same injuries in
a less degree, are eyermore afflicted with bill
ious diseases in summer and inhammatory
complaints in winter.
As the preservation of health is a matter
that deeply concern all, and living as we
do in a climate, subject tosudden and extreme
changes in temperature, have thought few
remarks upon the prevention of disease
would not be unacceptable to those that
have had the honor to address.
% In addition to keeping the body warmly
clad in winter, it is important to keep the
blood we'll supplied with carbon, which will
combine with the excess of oxygen taken
into the lungs by inhaling condensed air, and
thereby prevent its chemical attacks upon the
living tissues of the peculiarly exposed lungs.
This supply of carbon in the blood can be Sc
cured by eating meat and nutritious vegetable
food, far more of which are needed in cold
than in warm weather.
" Consumption Is the consuming. the slow
combustion of the tissues of the lungs by the
chemical action of oxygen gas, concentrated