Part 14

Treatment. The patient must have absolute rest and cold water irrigation or icebags applied to the head. The bowels may be opened by a saline, or a diuretic administered. If the head is persistently dropped it may be kept moderately elevated by a halter tied to a higher point. Should there be no relief at the end of twenty-four hours, no time should be lost in securing free admission of air to the cavity. Cruzel advises to saw off the horn at its base, as the one certain method of securing prompt improvement and speedy recovery. If a horn and its bony support have been broken off they should be at once removed and the head turned up to evacuate the accumulated glairy fluid from the sinus. From an apparently hopeless condition a few hours will suffice to restore an appearance of good health. If the horn has not been broken and it is desirable to save it, the bone may be trephined in front of the root of the horn and the liquid evacuated, or less effectively and more painfully the horn may be bored at its root by a large gimlet.

If no hæmorrhage has taken place and if active treatment has been adopted at the outset recovery may be complete in two or three days, but if the disease has been ushered in by a hæmorrhage which recurs several days in succession, amputation of the horn or trephining will be demanded. In chronic cases this should be followed by astringent and antiseptic injections and a blister may be applied to the throat or the side of the neck. In these cases too a course of mineral tonics is desirable.

CHRONIC CATARRH OF CATTLE.

Catarrh, chronic, summer aggravation, thickened, roughened, mucosa, discharge, twigs in nose. Question of parasitism. Treatment, remove causes, antiseptic astringents.

A remarkable form of chronic catarrh with summer aggravation exists in some of the hilly districts of New York but has not received such study as to enable us to state its true nature.

One or two in a large herd will have a loud snuffling breathing, which may subside so as to be entirely overlooked in winter, but reappears when put to pasture in the spring and continues in a marked form throughout the warm weather and until after the animal is returned to winter quarters. There appears to be little or no fever nor constitutional disturbance except what comes from the obstructed breathing, and the yield of milk may be unchanged. The symptoms would indicate a purely local disease. Yet so few are attacked out of a herd that it cannot be actively contagious.

On close examination the nasal chambers are found to be narrowed, there is manifest thickening of the mucosa, and its surface feels rough and uneven, with miliary elevations. There is of course more or less glairy discharge. If the examination is made about midsummer, the finger introduced into the nose will usually detect the ends of twigs that have been introduced into the cavity and broken off. When withdrawn these may prove individually from four to eight inches long, and some force may be required to extract them. In winter these are often absent, having been apparently dropped one by one. The absence of these sources of irritation sufficiently accounts for the manifest improvement during the colder months. In spite however of the winter remissions the disease tends to a steady advance year by year. While nothing definite is known of its pathology, the occurrence of this disease in given localities, its manifestly local nature, and its persistence when once established would suggest enquiry as to the possible existence of parasitism, bacteridian or otherwise.

Until further discovery treatment can only be of a general nature. Removal of the foreign bodies from the nose, pasturage where there is no brush to replace them, soiling when clean pastures cannot be found, and the use of astringent and antiseptic agents by insufflation or injection would be indicated.

MALIGNANT CATARRH OF CATTLE.

Local causes. Debilitation. Polluted air. Poor diet. Symptoms, gastro-intestinal, fever, lachrymation, turbid aqueous, photophobia, congestion of mucosæ, generally disturbed circulation, breathing, depression, heat of forehead, buccal petechiæ, epithelial desquamation, abrasions, ulcers, abortion, albuminuria, local swellings, shedding of horns, dropsy, dyspnœa. Lesions, in nasal mucosa, subcutem, cerebral, dark blood. Prognosis. Treatment, antiphlogistic, laxative, diuretic, tonic, locally steam, antiseptic, astringent, trephining.

This disease occurs chiefly in cold damp marshy localities where the vital power is impaired or in cold situations exposed to severe north and east winds. In the wet cold seasons of spring and autumn it is especially prevalent. According to Rychner it rarely attacks old cows but prevails among young cows and oxen. In the south of France on the contrary it appears chiefly in the hot season (June and July) and is attributed to suppressed transpiration. It prevails especially however in herds kept in small filthy stables, low in the roof, hot, close and badly aired. (Festal). In New York it appears in cattle on black muck pastures and in Minnesota on the dried up ponds.

Symptoms. Diarrhœa is a common premonitory symptom arising from the irritation of the intestinal canal as it is soon followed by some degree of costiveness, the dung becoming dark colored, firm and scanty. Diarrhœa reappears later. The coat stares or the beast actually shivers; the head is depressed; the roots of the horns and the forehead are hot; the eyes are sunken, swollen and red, suffused with tears, turbid in their anterior chamber (aqueous humor) and intolerant of light; The muzzle dry and hot; the mouth hot but moist with abundant saliva; the mucous membranes of the mouth, nose and vagina have a bluish red color; the pulse is rapid and more or less full or hard; impulse of the heart weak; the breathing is accelerated, the respiratory sound is heightened in intensity and a cough is frequent. Temperature 104° to 107° F. The urine is scanty and high colored. The surface of the body is alternately hot and cold, and after some time a watery fluid begins to distil from the nose.

At the end of twenty-four hours the symptoms are intensified or altered. The eyelids are more swollen and the flow of tears more profuse; the nasal discharge becomes slimy, and streaked with blood, and accumulations take place in the frontal sinuses as indicated by the increasing heat of the forehead and the dullness on percussion. In the mouth appear dark red spots, from blood extravasation, over which the epithelium sloughs off leaving raw unhealthy sores. The appetite entirely fails; dung and urine are passed painfully and with effort, and abortion frequently takes place in pregnant cows. The urine is albuminous with cell forms, and casts. The limbs appear rigid and it pains the animal to move.

From the fourth to the sixth day the ulceration appears on the mucous membrane of the nose which has often a claret color, and the nasal discharge becomes again more watery and irritating. The muzzle is swollen and a dropsical infiltration appears beneath the jaws which extends along the neck to beneath the thorax and into the limbs. Portions of the nasal mucous membrane now slough off, and similar sloughs are often seen on the skin of different parts of the body; the secreting structures of the horns and hoofs even participating so that these are easily detached or shed. Saliva flows profusely from the lips, a fetid watery diarrhœa succeeds the constipation, the dropsy becomes nearly general and death occurs on the eighth, ninth or tenth day of the illness. Convulsions and symptoms of suffocation may precede death.

In a post mortem section the principal lesions are found in the nasal cavities and skin. The areolar tissue in both is the seat of an abundant serous infiltration, which has taken place into the deeper layers of the skin as well, rendering it thick, hard and unyielding. Besides the sloughs and ulcerations on the skin and mucous membranes, false membranes have been met with, on the lining membrane of the mouth and air passages. The ulcers in the nose have in many cases reached the bone, and from the abundant infiltration and softening, the membrane is easily stripped from the walls of this cavity and of the sinuses. The general infiltration appears to have reached the brain, which is described as softened and having an undue amount of liquid in its cavities. The blood contained in the vessels is dark colored and numerous patches of extravasation are visible on the mucous and serous membranes as well as in the interior of organs.

Unless the malady can be controlled in its early stages it usually proves fatal. Patients that recover after it has been well developed at times retain its effects in permanent blindness or palsy of the hind limbs.

Treatment. Early and vigorous antiphlogistic measures are strongly recommended by French and Italian veterinarians. Gellé and Ercolani advocate the most copious bleedings. Festal insists that all other measures are useless when this is neglected. Before adopting free sanguineous depletion the history of his practice was a record of deaths, whereas later his losses were in cases where from a failure to recognize the disease at the outset, from the existence of diarrhœa, from the patient being pregnant or from a fear that the milking properties might be impaired, bleeding was deferred. He pushed the bleeding to the extent of causing acceleration of pulse, quickened breathing and heaving of the flanks, to effect which sixteen pounds had to be abstracted on an average. If this were done early the engorgement of the muzzle had usually greatly diminished if not entirely disappeared in the course of seven or eight hours thereafter. The alleged benefit is probably largely due to elimination.

Less heroic treatment is now generally adopted. An active purgative (one and a half pounds Epsom salts) may be given even though apparently contraindicated by the premonitory diarrhœa, and a further useful derivation may be obtained by applying active friction or even stimulating embrocations to the legs.

Steam with or without sulphur dioxide may be inhaled as for ordinary coryza and cold water or ice kept applied to the forehead.

Nitre in ounce doses daily or liquor of the acetate of ammonia in three ounce doses may be given after the purging has ceased. Or drachm doses of hydrochloric acid with bitters may be given thrice a day in at least a pint of water.

Where the nasal discharge persists after the subsidence of the other symptoms the sinuse should be trephined in front of the horn, and tepid water and mild astringent and antiseptic lotions injected until a healthy action has been established. Change to a dry, well drained pasture or building is desirable for both treatment and prevention.

CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF THE NOSE.

These are omitted here to be treated under that heading.

PARASITIC DISEASES OF THE NOSE.

Among these may be named:

LEECH BITES.

Form of wound, leeches in posterior nares, discharge of blood, mucus, sneezing, snorting, dysphagia, anorexia, unthriftiness, anæmia. Treatment, removal, sodium chloride, tar fumes, ether on sponge.

Though it more commonly attacks the mouth and lips yet the leech (Hirudo Decora) will sometimes fasten itself inside the nose when that is plunged in water. Its bite is to be recognized by its triangular shape. When taken in by the mouth it may fasten itself in the posterior nares where it is difficult to recognize its presence. In the anterior nares it can be readily discovered and removed, but in the posterior nares it may maintain its hold indefinitely. There appear in the nasal discharge streaks or clots of blood which may also show at the corners of the mouth. Sneezing, snorting, and difficulty of deglutition, may draw attention to the trouble, and in protracted cases signs of anæmia, inappetence, unthriftiness and general weakness. The most effective treatment is to remove the leech with the fingers, but as they cannot always be reached in this way, an injection of a strong solution of common salt may be used. Blaise succeeded by burning tar under the nose twice a day, and Louvigny by introducing a staff bearing a sponge soaked in ether.