[35] To obtain the eggs of the fluke worm for examination, hold a saucer under the gall bladder, make an opening in it with scissors, and the bile containing the eggs will flow into the dish. Pick out any fluke worms that may be in the fluid, then dilute it with about twelve times its bulk of water, agitate for a few minutes, and filter. The eggs will be found in the corner of the filtering paper.
[36] The notion that rot is occasioned by animalcules getting into the liver is not confined to this country. Leake, in his travels in the Morea, alludes to an opinion prevalent there, that the vidhéla (rot) is caused by the sheep feeding in marshy places in August and September, when it is imagined that an insect from the plants finds its way into the biliary vessels.
[37] Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine, Vol. iv. p. 524.
"Nor oftener are the floods disturb'd with wind
Than sheep with rots; nor doth the sickness find
One to destroy, but suddenly doth fall
On root and branch, stock and original."
Virgil's Georgics, Lib. III.
[39] When parcels of Mr Bakewell's best sheep became, from any defect, unserviceable to him, he used to fatten them for the butcher. But as there was a probability of their becoming valuable in other hands, he always gave them the rot before he sold them! An example, which, I hope, for the sake both of man and sheep, never to see followed.