Part 26

CLEANSING.--The placenta, or after-birth, by which the foetus is nourished while in embryo, should be removed soon after calving. Generally, it will come away without any assistance. This is what is called "cleansing after calving." When, however, it remains for some time, its function having been performed, it becomes a foreign body, exciting uterine contractions, and therefore injurious. The sooner, then, it is removed, the better for the animal as well as the owner. To accomplish this, the hand should be introduced, and, by pulling gently in various directions, it will soon yield and come away. Should it be allowed to remain, it rapidly decomposes, producing a low, feverish condition of the system, which greatly interferes with the general health of the animal.

INVERSION OF THE UTERUS.--The uterus is sometimes turned inside out after calving. This is, generally, the result of debility, or severe labor. The uterus should be replaced as carefully as possible with the hands, care being taken that no dirt, straw, or other foreign substance adheres to it. Should it again be expelled, it would be advisable to quiet the system by the use of an anaesthetic, as chloroform, or--which is much safer--chloric ether. As soon as the animal is under the influence of this, the uterus may be again replaced. The hind-quarters should be raised as high as possible, in order to favor its retention. The animal should have a little gruel and a bottle of porter given to her every five or six hours, and the vulva should be bathed frequently with cold water.

PHRENITIS.

Inflammation of the brain is one of those dreadful diseases to which all animals are liable. It is known to the farmer as frenzy, mad staggers, etc.

The active symptoms are preceded by stupor; the animal stubbornly stands in one position; the eyes are full, red, and fiery; respiration rapid; delirium soon succeeds; the animal, bellowing, dashes wildly about, and seems bent on mischief, rushing madly at every object which comes in its way.

The causes of this disease are overwork in warm weather, a plethoric condition of the system, and too stimulating food. Prof. Gamgee, of the Edinburgh Veterinary College, relates a case resulting from the presence within the external meatus of a mass of concrete cerumen, or wax, which induced inflammation of the ear, extending to the brain.

Treatment.--As this is attended with considerable risk, unless it is taken prior to the frenzied stage, bleeding almost to fainting should be resorted to, and followed by a brisk purge. Take one ounce of Barbadoes aloes, and ten to fifteen drops of Croton-oil; mix the aloes with one pint of water and the oil, using the mixture as a drench. One pound of Epsom-salts will answer the purpose very well, in cases where the aloes and oil cannot be readily obtained. Application of bags of broken ice to the head, is very beneficial. Spirits of turpentine, or mustard, together with spirits of hartshorn and water should be well rubbed in along the spine, from the neck to the tail.

PLEURISY.

This is an inflammation of the pleura, or the serous membrane which lines the cavity of the chest, and which is deflected over the lungs. Inflammation of this membrane rarely occurs in a pure form, but is more generally associated with inflammation of the tissue of the lungs. If this disease is not attended to at an early period, its usual termination is in hydrothorax, or dropsy of the chest. The same causes which produce inflammation of the lungs, of the bronchia, and of the other respiratory organs, produce also pleurisy.

Symptoms.--The respiration is quick, short, and painful; pressure between the ribs produces much pain; a low, short, painful cough is present; the respiratory murmur is much diminished,--in fact, it is scarcely audible. This condition is rapidly followed by effusion, which may be detected from the dullness of the sounds, on applying the ear to the lower part of the lungs. The febrile symptoms disappear; the animal for a few days appears to improve, but soon becomes weak, languid, and often exhausted from the slightest exertion.

Treatment.--The same treatment in the early stage is enjoined as in inflammatory pneumonia, which the reader will consult--counter-irritation and purgatives. Bleeding never should be resorted to. When effusion takes place, it is necessary to puncture the sides with a trochar, and draw away the fluid, giving internally one of the following purges three times a day: rosin, eight ounces; saltpetre, two ounces, mix, and divide into eight powders. Half-drachm doses of the iodide of potash, dissolved in water, to be given three times daily, will be found useful in this disease.

PLEURO-PNEUMONIA.

This disease, as its name implies, is an inflammatory condition of the lungs and the pleura, or the enveloping membrane of the lungs and the lining membrane of the chest. It is sometimes called contagious, infectious, and epizooetic pleuro-pneumonia,--contagious or infectious, from its supposed property of transmission from the diseased to the healthy animal.

A contagious character the author is not ready to assign to it,--contagious, as he understands it, being strictly applicable to those diseases which depend upon actual contact with the poison that it may be communicated from one animal to another. This does not necessarily imply the actual touching of the animals themselves; for it may be communicated from the poison left in the trough, or other places where the diseased animal has been brought in contact with some object, as is often the case in glanders in the horse; the matter discharged from the nose, and left upon the manger, readily communicating that disease to healthy animals coming in contact with it. Contagious diseases, therefore, travel very slowly, starting, as they do, at one point, and gradually spreading over a large district, or section of country.

This disease is, however, regarded by the author as infectious; by which term is meant that it is capable of being communicated from the diseased to the healthy animal through the medium of the air, which has become contaminated by the exhalations of poisonous matter. The ability to inoculate other animals in this way is necessarily confined to a limited space, sometimes not extending more than a few yards. Infectious diseases, accordingly, spread with more rapidity than contagious ones, and are, consequently, more to be dreaded; since we can avoid the one with comparatively little trouble, while the other often steals upon us when we regard ourselves as beyond its influence, carrying death and destruction in its course.

The term by which this disease is known, is a misnomer. Pleuro-pneumonia proper is neither a contagious, nor an infectious disease; hence, the denial of medical men that this so-called pleuro-pneumonia is a contagious, or infectious disease, has been the means of unnecessarily exposing many animals to its poisonous influence.

In the Recueil de Medecine Veterinaire, for 1833, will be found a very interesting description of this fatal malady. The author, M. Lecoy, Assistant Professor at the Veterinary School of Lyons, France, says: "There are few districts in the arrondissement of Avesnes where more cattle are fattened than in that of Soire-le-Chateau. The farmers being unable to obtain a sufficient supply of cattle in the district, are obliged to purchase the greater part of them from other provinces; and they procure a great number for grazing from Franche Comte. The cattle of this country are very handsome; their forms are compact; they fatten rapidly; and they are a kind of cattle from which the grazer would derive most advantage, were it not that certain diseases absorb, by the loss of some of the animals, the profits of the rest of the herd. Amongst the diseases which most frequently attack the cattle which are brought from the North, there is one very prevalent in some years, and which is the more to be dreaded as it is generally incurable; and the slaughter of the animal, before he is perceptibly wasted, is the only means by which the farmer can avoid losing the whole value of the beast.

"This disease is chronic pleuro-pneumonia. The symptoms are scarcely recognizable at first, and often the beast is ill for a long time without its being perceived. He fattens well, and when he is slaughtered the owner is astonished to find scarcely half of the lungs capable of discharging the function of respiration. When, however, the ox has not sufficient strength of constitution to resist the ravages of disease, the first symptom which is observed is diminution, or irregularity of appetite. Soon afterwards, a frequent, dry cough is heard, which becomes feeble and painful as the disease proceeds. The dorso-lumbar portion of the spine (loins) grows tender; the animal flinches when the part is pressed upon, and utters a peculiar groan, or grunt, which the graziers regard as decisive of the malady.

"Quickly after this, the movements of the flanks become irregular and accelerated, and the act of respiration is accompanied by a kind of balancing motion of the whole body. The sides of the chest become as tender as the loins, or more so; for the animal immediately throws himself down, if pressed upon with any force. The elbows become, in many subjects, more and more separated from the sides of the chest. The pulse is smaller than natural, and not considerably increased. The muzzle is hot and dry, alternately. The animal lies down as in a healthy state, but rumination is partially or entirely suspended. The faeces are harder than they should be; the urine is of its natural color and quantity; the mouth is often dry; and the horns and ears retain their natural temperature.

"This first stage of the disease sometimes continues during a month, or more, and then, if the animal is to recover, or at least, apparently so, the symptoms gradually disappear. First of all, the appetite returns, and the beast begins to acquire a little flesh. The proprietor should then make haste and get rid of him; for it is very rare that the malady, however it may be palliated for a while, does not reappear with greater intensity than before.

"In most cases, the disease continues to pursue its course toward its termination without any remission,--every symptom gradually increasing in intensity. The respiration becomes more painful; the head is more extended; the eyes are brilliant; every expiration is accompanied with a grunt, and by a kind of puckering of the angles of the lips; the cough becomes smaller, more suppressed, and more painful; the tongue protrudes from the mouth, and a frothy mucus is abundantly discharged; the breath becomes offensive; a purulent fluid of a bloody color escapes from the nostrils; diarrhoea, profuse and fetid, succeeds to the constipation; the animal becomes rapidly weaker; he is a complete skeleton, and at length he dies.

"Examination after death discloses slight traces of inflammation in the intestines, discoloration of the liver, and a hard, dry substance contained in the manyplus. The lungs adhere to the sides and to the diaphragm by numerous bands, evidently old and very firm. The substance of the lungs often presents a reddish-gray hepatization throughout almost its whole extent. At other times, there are tubercles in almost every state of hardness, and in that of suppuration. The portion of the lungs that is not hepatized is red, and gorged with blood. Besides the old adhesions, there are numerous ones of recent date. The pleura is not much reddened, but by its thickness in some points, its adhesion in others, and the effusion of a serous fluid, it proves how much and how long it has participated in the inflammatory action. The trachea and the bronchia are slightly red, and the right side of the head is gorged with blood.

"In a subject in which, during life, I could scarcely feel the beating of the heart, I found the whole of the left lobe of the lungs adhering to the sides, and completely hepatized. In another, that had presented no sign of disease of the chest, and that for some days before his death vomited the little fodder which he could take, the whole of that portion of the oesophagus that passed through the chest was surrounded with dense false membranes, of a yellowish hue, ranging from light to dark, and being in some parts more than an inch in thickness, and adhering closely to the muscular membrane of the tube, without allowing any trace to be perceived of that portion of the mediastinal pleura on which this unnatural covering was fixed and developed.

"The cattle purchased in Franche Comte are brought to Avesnes at two periods of the year--in autumn and in the spring. Those which are brought in autumn are much more subject to the disease than those which have arrived in the spring; and it almost always happens that the years in which it shows itself most generally are those in which the weather was most unfavorable while the cattle were on the road. The journey is performed by two different routes,--through Lorraine and through Champagne,--and the disease frequently appears in cattle that have arrived by one of these routes. The manner in which the beasts are treated, on their arrival, may contribute not a little to the development of the malady. These animals, which have been driven long distances in bad weather, and frequently half starved, arrived famished, and therefore the more fatigued, and some of them lame. Calculating on their ravenous appetite, the graziers, instead of giving them wholesome food, make them consume the worst that the farm contains,--musty and mouldy fodder; and it is usually by the cough, which the eating of such food necessarily produces, that the disease is discovered and first developed.

"Is chronic pleuro-pneumonia contagious? The farmers believe that it is, and I am partly of their opinion. When an animal falls sick in the pasture, the others, after his removal, go and smell at the grass where he has lain, and which he has covered with his saliva, and, after that, new cases succeed to the first. It is true that this fact is not conclusive, since the disease also appears in a great number of animals that have been widely separated from each other. But I have myself seen three cases in which the cattle of the country, perfectly well before, have fallen ill, and died with the same symptoms, excepting that they have been more acute, after they have been kept with cattle affected with this disease. This circumstance inclines me to think that the disease is contagious; or, at least, that, in the progress of it, the breath infects the cow-house in which there are other animals already predisposed to the same disease. I am induced to believe that most of the serious internal diseases are communicated in this manner, and particularly those which affect the organs of respiration, when the animals are shut up in close, low, and badly-ventilated cow-houses." [Rec. de Med. Vet. Mai, 1833.]

No malady can be more terrible and ruinous than this among dairy-stock; and its spread all over the country, together with its continuance with scarcely any abatement, must be attributed to the combination of various causes. The chief are: first, the very contagious or infectious nature of the disorder; second, inattention on the part of Government to the importation and subsequent sale of diseased animals; and, third, the recklessness of purchasers of dairy or feeding cattle.

This disease may be defined as an acute inflammation of the organs of the chest, with the development of a peculiar and characteristic poison, which is the active element of infection or contagion. It is a disease peculiar to the cattle tribe, notwithstanding occasional assertions regarding observations of the disease among horses, sheep, and other animals,--which pretended observations have not been well attested.

The infectious, or contagious nature of this virulent malady is incontestibly substantiated by an overwhelming amount of evidence, which cannot be adduced at full length here, but which may be classified under the following heads: first, the constant spreading of the disease from countries in which it rages to others which, previously to the importation of diseased animals, had been perfectly free from it. This may be proved in the case of England, into which country it was carried in 1842, by affected animals from Holland. Twelve months after, it spread from England to Scotland, by means of some cattle sold at All-Hallow Fair, and it was only twelve months afterward that cattle imported as far north as Inverness took the disease there. Lately, a cow taken from England to Australia was observed to be diseased upon landing, and the evil results were limited to her owner's stock, who gave the alarm, and ensured an effectual remedy against a wider spread. Besides, the recent importation of pleuro-pneumonia into the United States from Holland appears to have awakened our agricultural press generally, and to have convinced them of the stubborn fact that our cattle have been decimated by a fearfully infectious, through probably preventable, plague. A letter from this country to an English author says: "Its (pleuro-pneumonia's) contagious character seems to be settled beyond a doubt, though some of the V.S. practitioners deny it, which is almost as reasonable as it would be to deny any other well-authenticated historic fact. Every case of the disease is traceable to one of two sources; either to Mr. Chenery's stock in Belmont (near Boston, Massachusetts), into which the disease was introduced by his importation of four Dutch cows from Holland, which arrived here the 23d of last May; or else to one of the three calves which he sold to a farmer in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, last June."