Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/158

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150 KHE till 1870. English settlers in the district bear evidence to the fact that it was practically unknown during the first nine years after annexation, and old native inhabitants, while admitting that human mortality was sometimes very great under native rule, deny that anything approaching the murrains now to be referred to ever occurred. The following remarks are drawn from notes taken at the time by the editor :- The principal disease is a virưlent diarrhoea accompanied with swelling. of the dewlap; but chaundhiána, otherwise called chakkar or ghumni, has been very fatal over a limited area. Foot-and-mouth disease has not been virulent at all, and need not be feferred to. Chaundhiána seems to be something like "stomach staggers;" the animal refuses food, cannot void, turns round perpetually and dies in an interval varying from an hour to a day. The treatment consists in firing in parallel lines from the chest to the flank and round the eyes, and giving internal doses of the inspissated juice of three-year-old cowdung.--evidently merely a relig- ious charm added by the Brahmans to the real treatment. Firing I have seen effectual in causing recovery, but I need not waste time on technical subjects of which I know nothing. One thing is clear: that the great cause of both diseases and of the mortality is the bad food grown on the marshes; the natives showed me particular poisonous plants in the marshes which the cattle ate greedily, but the bad rank grass is quite enough of itself. I do not think the village site has much to do with it; fine dry villages with lofty sites like Siáthu, Ramuápur have suffered the most because the cattle grazed in the marshes beneath. * I append a list of villages observed by me in which the grazing was of this description, with the recorded mortality :- No. of deaths, Village. Surviving Remarks, 1870. 1871. 14 87 56 1 lad tot Ahmadnagar Haidarabad Alrori Munda Bisban Mamri Ramaápar Dhangaon Dharáván Bel Siátbut 163 263 80 70 300 230 83 3) 30 100 51 129 672 426 70 147 349 166 163 68 60 190 . 35 10 15 Total ... 1,260 398 2,300 The diseases, except kora, are quite different from those mentioned by Dr. McLeod in the report on murrain. The principal symptoms not

  • On this point see White's Veterinary Act, nineteenth edition, page 165.

“Before the moois were onclosed and drained staggers frequently happened ; since, hardly ever." The above refers to the borse, but cowpathology is fairly analogous I believe. Before I saw this I bad noticed that wherever there were marshes, as around the head-Wacers of the Sarayan, Jamwári, Kewani, in this district, cattle-disease was far more prevalent than elsewhere.