Part 24

Not only does the milk vary so widely with the genera, but that of the ruminating animal with its great excess of casein coagulates in the stomach into large dense clots which are not easily penetrated and digested by the peptic juices while that of woman or soliped forms loose clots, easily permeable by the gastric fluids and therefore much more readily digestible. Indeed the milk of these monogastric animals often form loose floating flocculi only, instead of solid clots. As cows are usually selected for foster-mothers to the orphaned animals of other genera this becomes a source of danger to the young and must be obviated by modifying the milk more in keeping with that of man or soliped.

As predisposing causes, must be named a weak constitution and damp, dark, filthy, or otherwise unwholesome buildings. Buildings with no drainage nor ventilation beneath the floors, standing on filth-saturated soil, and those with double walls holding dead rats and chickens are especially to be dreaded. In breeds of inconstant color the lighter colored calves (light yellow, light brown) are more subject to such attacks than the darker shades (dark browns, reds, blacks). The weak constitution may be a result of close breeding, without due consideration of the strength and vigor of the parents. Then young animals kept indoors in impure air, damp and darkness are more susceptible than those that are kept in pasture and are invigorated by exercise, pure air and sunshine.

Aside from the general run of causes, predisposing and exciting, we must recognize the contagious element. Jensen has sought to identify the microbe as a small ovoid bacillus united in pairs, or in long chains. This was present not only in the ingesta, but in the lesions of the mucosa, and in the lymph glands. Its cultures ingested in milk, or injected into the rectum sometimes produced the affection. Microscopically it resembled the bacillus fœtidus lactis, but the latter failed to produce the disease. He looks upon it as a sport of the bacillus coli communis.

Perroncito found micrococci, usually arranged in pairs and comparable to the cultures of those obtained from the blood in the pneumonia of calves. The injection of the cultures into the thorax of a Guinea-pig caused pleuro-pneumonia with or without dysentery. The rabbit proved immune. At the necropsy the Guinea-pig like the calf showed the diplococci in the blood. Nikolski who studied the affection in lambs seeks to incriminate both micrococci and bacilli.

It is premature to specify any particular microbe as the sole cause of the affection. It seems not improbable that bacterial ferments of one or more specific kinds, which in a healthy animal have no injurious effect, may by special combination, or by growth in a mucosa in a given morbid condition, acquire properties which render them not only violently irritating, but may retain such properties so as to render them actively contagious. In this condition they may overcome the resistance of the most healthy stomach and bowels and attack all young animals into which they may secure an entrance. Certain it is that the infection may persist in the same stable for years, will enter a new herd with a newly purchased cow or calf bought out of a previously infected lot, and will follow the watershed and affect in succession the different herds drinking from a stream as it flows downward.

The similarity of the germ found by Jensen to the bacillus coli communis, suggests that in this as in a number of other contagious affections a pathogenic sport from this common saprophyte is at least one of the microbian factors in this disease.

Symptoms. These may set in just after birth but usually the disease occurs within the two first weeks of life. When delayed for a few days after birth it may be preceded by some constipation, the fæces appearing hard, moulded, and covered with mucus. This is especially the case when the meconium has been retained and has proved a cause of irritation. The young animal is careless of the teat or refuses it (or the pail if brought up by hand), yawns and seems weary. The abdominal muscles are tense and the belly may be swollen if fermentation has already set in but this is rarely excessive. Straining to defecate usually causes eructations of an acid odor, and sometimes vomiting of solid soursmelling clots. Abdominal pain may be manifested by uneasy movements of the tail and hind limbs, by looking toward the flank and even by plaintive cries. This is followed within six hours by liquid dejections, at first merely soft, slimy and sour but soon complicated by a peculiar odor of rotten cheese which becomes increasingly offensive as the malady advances. The tail and hips become soaked with the discharges and as the putrid fermentation goes on after their discharge of the fæcal matters, the air becomes more and more repulsive. The same odor pervades the mouth and the breath and the tongue is coated with a whitish, grayish or yellowish fur.

The fæces become more watery and slimy, with much casein in course of putrefaction, and the patient is rapidly run down by the profuse discharge and the general poisoning by absorbed putrid products. In the worst cases this may prove fatal in one or two days.

When the illness is more prolonged the alvine passages which at first number five or six per day, increase to fifteen or twenty and are passed with more effort, usually leaving the anus in a liquid stream. The color of the stools changes from a yellow to a grayish yellow or dirty white, hence the common name of white scour, and the fœtor is intensified.

Appetite may be in part preserved for a time but is gradually lost, and the subject becomes dull, listless and weak, indisposed to rise and walking unsteadily when raised. A general appearance of unthriftiness, staring coat, scurfy, unhealthy skin, pallor of the mucous membranes, arching of the back, tucking up and tenderness of the abdomen, excoriation of the margins of the anus, and congestion of the rectum as seen everted during defecation, mark the advance of the disease. Emaciation becomes very marked, and weakness and prostration extreme.

Fever usually sets in as the disease advances, as marked by hyperthermia, hot dry muzzle, hot ears, accelerated pulse and breathing.

When the intestinal fermentation is extreme there may be distinct bloating, more acute colicy pains, rumbling of the bowels and a frothy and even bloody condition of the dejections. The prostration may become extreme and the temperature reduced to the normal or below.

Death may result from inanition and exhaustion, or from nervous prostration and poisoning.

The affection may be complicated by purulent arthritis, peritonitis, pneumonia, hepatitis, keratitis or laminitis. It may prove fatal in from three to ten days.

Mortality. This is always high. For foals it has been set down at 80 per cent. of the numbers attacked, for calves at 54 to 90 per cent., and for lambs at 66 per cent. In 500 lambs Beresow found 300 attacked and 200 died. Kuleschow sets the losses at 30 to 40 per cent. of the lambs, and Cadeac advises that even the survivors should be fitted for the butcher as they are unfit for reproduction.

Lesions. In foals these are mainly confined to the intestines which show a more or less extended area of redness and congestion with catarrhal or pseudomembranous exudate on the mucosa, and the submucous connective tissue is infiltrated softened and marked by intense punctiform redness. The epithelium is swollen, opaque and easily detached, and Peyers patches infiltrated and prominent. The blood in the intestinal vessels is incoagulable. Exudation into the peritoneum and softening of the liver are not infrequent.

In calves the lesions are very similar, but the 4th stomach is usually implicated, the congestion and epithelial desquamation being most marked in the pyloric region. The contents of the intestines are mucopurulent, grayish, yellowish or red, and intensely fœtid. The follicles of the small intestine are red and projecting with an areola of congestion. Softening and even necrotic centers are found in the liver and kidneys and the mesenteric glands are swollen, red and softened.

In lambs the lesions are nearly the same in the 4th stomach, intestine, lymph glands, liver and kidneys. There is usually marked emaciation and the spleen and nerve centres are anæmic.

Prevention. The first consideration is to avoid the various causes which have been enumerated. Give the young the warm milk of its dam or of a nurse of the same species and at the same time after parturition. If it is necessary to give older milk to the new born don’t fail to clear out the bowels by a tablespoonful or two of castor oil (foal, calf,) or two teaspoonfuls (lamb), or to add manna or linseed decoction to the milk. Protect both nurse and nursling against cold storms, overheating, overwork, excitement, and sudden changes of diet, (dry to green, etc.). If the nurse has been overheated or overexcited draw off the first milk by hand and let the nursling have only that which is secreted later. Avoid the milk of diseased and especially fevered animals. If the milk of one nurse disagrees, correct any obvious cause in the food or general management, and if none can be found get another nurse. If fungi appear in the milk (inducing ropiness or not) withold the food or water from which they have been probably derived and give bisulphite of soda (cow or mare 2 to 4 drs., ewe ½ dr. daily). When an animal of one genus has to be brought up on the milk of another, let the milk be so modified by the addition of water, sugar, cream, etc., as will approximate it somewhat to the normal food. The milk of the cow may be given unchanged to lambs or kids, while for the foal it should be diluted by adding ⅖ of water, and sugar enough to render it perceptibly sweet. Even more sugar is wanted for the young ass. In place of simple water, barley water may be used, as this not only loosens the coagulum formed in the stomach, but renders it especially open and permeable to the digestive fluids. Another method of special value for puppies is to let the cow’s milk stand for several hours and then take only the upper half (containing most of the cream) for feeding. This must be watched lest it should unduly relax the bowels. In all cases the milk artificially prepared should be given milk warm. To retard the acid fermentation which is liable to occur early and injuriously in adapted milk, the addition of an ounce of lime water to each quart of milk is of great advantage. Pigs and puppies can usually adapt themselves readily to the milk of the cow. In all cases in which a young animal is raised by hand and especially if on the milk of another species, it is desirable to provide against sudden overloading of the stomach. The artificial rubber teat fixed in the feeding pail serves a good purpose in this respect. Pasteurizing is admissible but boiling of the milk is objectionable, as rendering the milk constipating and thereby favoring irritation. In condensed milk this tendency is largely reduced by reason of the excess of sugar and consequent looseness of the clot, only care should be taken to dilute it sufficiently with boiled water.

Among the most important measures of precaution, is the separation of the sick from the healthy, and to disinfect thoroughly the buildings in which the infected have been. Straw, and when possible dung should be burned; if not, they should be buried together with the urine. The stalls should be thoroughly cleansed and then saturated with mercuric chloride (1 : 1000), or sulphuric acid (3 : 100), or a saturated solution of sulphate of copper. Here as elsewhere chloride of lime (4 oz. to the gallon) with as much quick lime as will make a good white wash, does admirably, as it is at once seen if any part has been missed.

Esser remarked that the calves of cows that had been removed to another stable some time before parturition, usually remained healthy, provided they were kept from the other and sick calves.

Lastly, it is important to use for breeding purposes such animals only as have a strong, vigorous constitution, and to furnish a healthful, abundant aliment and to allow a sufficient amount of exercise during gestation. Vigor and stamina are the great desiderata, but these are usually found with the darker colors.

Treatment. The old treatment of eliminating offensive matter by a laxative is still good, and thus castor oil (2 ozs. for a foal or calf, 2 drs. for lamb), or rhubarb (1 dr. foal or calf, 1 scr. for lamb), or manna (½ oz, foal or calf, 1 dr., lamb), may be given with laudanum (1 dr., foal or calf, 10 drops, lamb), and salicylate of soda (16 grs., foal or calf, 5 grs.,lamb). The milk should be given boiled. An old and excellent remedy to follow the laxative is solution of rennet made by adding ⅛ of a calf’s abomasum to a quart of 20 per cent, alcohol (or sherry). A tablespoonful may be given with each meal. The value of this as an antiferment is liable to be overlooked, yet both the hydrochloric acid and pepsin are strongly antiseptic, and neither of these is produced to any extent in the diseased stomach. In addition to this ipecacuan has been used and by its stimulant action on both stomach and liver it furnishes the two most important natural disinfectants of the alimentary canal (foal or calf 1 dr., lamb 10 drops ipecacuan wine, thrice a day).

In addition to these or separately, antiseptics, carminatives and astringents may be employed. An excellent preparation is prepared chalk 1 oz., white bismuth 1 oz., tincture of cinnamon 8 ozs., gum arabic ½ oz. A tablespoonful thrice a day will often check the disorder.

Cadeac advises, subnitrate of bismuth 5 grains, salicylic acid 5 grains, naphthol 20 grains, syrup 150 grains, distilled water 100 grains. One or two tablespoonfuls in the mouth after each drink (foal or calf).

Filliatre obtained excellent results in calves, with a solution of tar 150 grams in 6 litres boiling water, given in the dose of ⅓ litre every half hour. It may also be used as an enema. The diarrhœa is promptly checked, and the tar water may then be restricted to ¼ litre mixed with the milk of the next two days. One-tenth of the dose may be given to lambs.

Among other antiseptics in use may be named salicylic acid and tannin, salol, boric acid, betol, diaphthol, bruzonaphthol, salicylate of bismuth, creolin, naphthalin, and lactic acid.

When icteric membranes, white discharges and extreme fœtor indicate hepatic disorder, calomel 1 part and chalk 12 parts may be resorted to three or four times a day (foal or calf 6 grs., lamb 1 gr.).