Part 28

Treatment. The mildest cases will recover of themselves, especially if care is taken to protect the patients against cold, wet, draughts of cold air, over-exertion, and other injurious causes, and to give a part of the food warm and sloppy. In severe cases treatment must be more active, but it will be borne in mind that severe depletive measures are badly endured. Bleeding dangerously increases the already existing weakness and prostration without affording any corresponding advantage. It is only admissible when from the severity of the symptoms in the early stages suffocation is threatened or when the brain becomes involved in disease.

Causing the patient to inhale water vapor from scalded bran or hay is to be assiduously carried on for half an hour to an hour twice or thrice daily until expectoration has been freely established and the cough and fever alike moderated. The density of the vapor must of course be apportioned to the particular case so as to avoid any approach to suffocation. The addition of the fumes of burning sulphur will often by their astringent and antiphlogistic action on the mucous membrane, render the vaporous application more effective. A pinch put into a small piece of paper twisted at one end to prevent burning of the fingers may be set fire to and the fumes allowed to pervade the apartment so that they can be breathed freely without inducing cough. A mustard poultice to the neck and sides of the chest should also be applied and kept on an hour or until effusion into the skin is well marked by thickening of its substance. Injections of warm water should be given alike to check or obviate shivering and to equalize the general temperature and to solicit the action of the bowels. In sporadic cases with active fever and full strong pulse a laxative dose of aloes (3 to 4 drachms) may be given, but if with a low fever and during the prevalence of influenza not more than half the dose should be given or enemata alone may be relied upon. As soon as the medicine has set or at once if it is withheld, neutral salts may be given (Liquor Ammoniæ Acetatis 2 oz. or Sweet Spirits of Nitre 1 oz. or nitrate of potass ½ oz. combined with 10 drops tincture of aconite repeated twice or thrice daily). If the cough is troublesome and secretion long in being established, expectorants may be used (oxymel of squill 3 oz., powdered squill ½ oz. or liquorice 1 drachm) with half the doses of the neutral salts.

In the early stages to hasten expectoration such preparations as the following may be given:

Recipe: Potas. Bicarb. 2 ounces; Ammon. Carb. 2 ounces; Digitalis Pulv. 2 drams. Mix. Divide into eight powders: give one every four hours.

Recipe: Ammon. Murias. 2 ounces; Choral. Hydrat. 1 ounce; Tinct. Hyoscam. 2 fluid ounces; Aqua 8 fluid ounces. Mix. Give two tablespoonfuls every four hours.

Apomorphia, tartar emetic, turpentine or benzoin may be employed or even pilocarpin, care being taken not to increase prostration unduly. Compressed air, oxygen and peroxide of hydrogen will sometimes relieve.

With the advent of expectoration, or earlier, iodide of potassium in one drachm dose, thrice a day will do much to obviate glandular and other enlargement which would tend to develop roaring.

The diet should be laxative, non-stimulating and somewhat spare. Mashes of wheat bran, boiled linseed or boiled barley; roots such as turnips, carrots, beets; in summer a limited supply of fresh grass, with little hay at any time and that scalded, may indicate the nature of the aliments to be used. As a beverage chilled fresh water or linseed tea may be supplied ad libitum.

Should the nasal discharge manifest no disposition to cease at the end of 15 or 20 days, as will sometimes happen in young horses, stimulants and tonics must be employed. Gentian (4 drachms), Sulphate of iron (2 drachms), Arsenious acid (5 to 10 grains) or nux vomica (1 scruple) may be given daily as ball, electuary or powder. A full and nutritive diet should at the same time be allowed, and open air exercise enjoined.

CHRONIC BRONCHITIS IN THE HORSE. BRONCHIAL CATARRH.

As Sequel of Acute: as result of unhygienic environment, diet and usage. Symptoms, breathing accelerated, double expiratory act, short breath, cough husky, or paroxysmal, excited by cold air, water, discharge white flocculent. Percussion, drum-like patches; Auscultation mucous and sibilant râles. Lesions, thick mucus, pale membranes, bronchiectasis, emphysema, ulceration. Thick wind. Treatment, stimulating, tonic, derivative, medicated vapors, careful diet. Tar water.

This may be a sequel of the acute form, or it may appear at once as a catarrhal discharge from the bronchial tubes and without any very marked febrile affection, in animals debilitated by damp stables, overwork and a faulty regimen and diet.

Symptoms. Respiration accelerated, and expiration effected with a double lifting of the flank; the horse is easily blown when moderately exercised; the cough is frequent, soft or rattling and paroxysmal—sometimes hard and deep—is excited when brought from the warm stable into the cold air, and is followed by a whitish, flocculent, purulent discharge from the nostrils, consistent but not sticky (like buttermilk). The pulse is rapid and small in volume.

Percussion manifests a healthy resonance over the greater part or all of the chest, a drum-like sound over given areas, and auscultation over its median part detects a bronchial rattle and in most cases a dry sibilant râle.

After death the bronchial tubes are found to contain an abundance of thick mucus, though abnormal redness of the mucous membrane is by no means a necessary condition. There is always more or less dilatation of the bronchial tubes especially at their points of subdivision where they are often twice their healthy calibre, and an emphysematous state of the lungs is equally constant. Delafond and Rodet have noted minute ulcers on the bronchial mucous membrane and Reynal miliary abscesses and grayish and white indurations of the lung tissue and bronchial glands which may have been glanderous.

It will be observed that the symptoms and lesions closely resemble those of broken wind (heaves), and unless early and successfully treated, into this it gradually merges. The chief distinguishing symptoms are the abundance and nature of the discharge, the fetor of the breath, and the presence of the mucous râle in the chest. It is one of the conditions known by the horseman’s expression “thick wind.”

Treatment. Like its type (dilatation of the bronchia, bronchiectasis) in man this disease obstinately resists treatment. In our efforts to cure it the same general principles must be followed as in acute bronchitis, with this grand qualification that the general aim must be to stimulate and support. Stimulating liniments may be repeatedly applied along the course of the trachea and on the sides of the chest. An equable temperature is desirable and a dry building. Water vapor medicated with various astringents and antiseptics (creosote, carbolic acid, turpentine, tar, or tar vapor) is to be commended. A course of tonic and expectorant medicine is desirable and a highly nutritious and laxative diet is imperatively demanded.

As tonics Gentian may be given daily in 4 drachm doses combined with quaiacum in doses of 2 scruples. In most cases it will be advisable to add to the above or employ separately arsenious acid in doses of 5 to 10 grains combined with three times the amount of bicarbonate of soda, and given daily for a month or longer.

The diet should be as for broken wind, nutritious, in small bulk, of a laxative nature and given at least an hour before work. A moderate supply of grass, roots, bran, oats or barley may be given, but hay must be sparingly supplied and, if exclusively clover hay, dry and dusty, is better withheld. In the north of France horses with chronic bronchitis are maintained in a serviceable condition by a diet of cut straw and cut hay, well sifted to remove all dust mixed with oats and molasses and set aside in a large cask to ferment before being given to the animals. Tar water may be the exclusive drink.

A pint of linseed, well boiled, and given daily for a length of time in succession is often of great value.

BRONCHITIS IN THE OX.

Working oxen most susceptible. Causes, damp buildings, wet, cold, exposed localities. Debility, overwork, poor feeding, close, foul stables, sudden changes of temperature. Previous attacks. Symptoms, mild form, and severe, fever, sneezing, cough, dry, later soft, prostration, retraction of nostrils, labored breathing, hot breath, discharge, watery, milky, purulent. Duration, Complications and sequelæ. Chronic form. Respiratory disturbance, paroxysmal cough, purulent discharge, mucous and sibilant râles, emaciation. Lesions. Treatment, laxative safer, expectorant, derivative stimulant, etc., as in horse. Bronchitis in pigs and sheep.

This is less common than the same disease in the horse, though in working oxen, in which many of the same causes operate, it is frequently seen. It is not infrequent in other cattle in damp buildings or in wet cold exposed situations. Debility from overwork and poor feeding, often brings on the chronic form of this disease. Living out in damp nights after a hard day’s work is another frequent cause. The enervating influence of the hot foul air of many cow houses conduces to it and is specially injurious if alternated with a chilling atmosphere out of doors. Previous attacks strongly predispose to future ones.

Symptoms. Some cases are so slight as to escape a cursory observation and subsiding in a few days leave the animal perfectly well. Others are severe and may prove dangerous.

The earlier symptoms are dullness, staring coat or shivering, and sneezing, followed by reaction with hot clammy mouth, general increase of temperature, rapid pulse, reddened nose and eyes, and suspended rumination. The more characteristic symptoms are a hard, dry, hacking cough, not so resonant as in the horse, and soon a mucous discharge from the nose usually cleared away by the tongue almost as rapidly as formed.

If the case increases in severity, and in many cases almost from the first there is great depression, hanging head, semi-closed watery eyes, extreme movement of the nostrils, hot expired air, labored action of the flank, complete loss of appetite, constipation, fæces covered by mucus, cough very hard, painful, occurring in paroxysms and easily excited by touching the larynx or trachea. This is followed by a loose cough, a free discharge from the nose and a mucous râle on auscultation. Percussion gives healthy resonance. The disease reaches its height on the fifth day and recovery may be almost perfect on the eighth. Its chief danger is from a complication with pneumonia or pleurisy, or from its merging into the chronic form.

=Chronic bronchitis in the ox= is characterized by a persistent disturbance of the respiration, paroxysms of coughing, a white flocculent discharge from the nose, increasing emaciation, pallor of the mucous membranes, a mucous râle over the windpipe and median part of the chest and a cooing sound over other points. If left to itself emaciation becomes extreme, the skin is harsh, inelastic, attached to the ribs and covered by vermin, and death usually ensues from diarrhœa or consumption.

After death the lesions are like those seen in the horse, unless there is the complication of tuberculous or other disease of the substance of the lungs.