Part 42

Causes: decomposing swill, ferments from snout and feet in swill, toxins, salt, brine, powdered soaps, etc. Symptoms: dullness, inappetence, fever, burrowing under litter, stiffness, drooping head, ears and tail, arched back, tender abdomen, constipation, diarrhœa, petechiæ, rumbling, tympany, weakness, emaciation, paraplegia, not actively infectious. Duration: one to eight days or more. Lesions: mucopurulent exudation in alimentary canal, congestion, extravasation, hemorrhages, ulcerations, congestion of peritoneum, mesenteric glands and other organs. Diagnosis: presence of alimentary causes, many attacked at once, no spread to better kept herds, no germ fatal to guinea-pigs nor rabbits. Treatment: eliminate, oil, calomel, flaxseed, gruels, enemata, antiseptics, revulsives, diet during convalescence, antidotes.

Causes. The enteritis of swine has been long considered as infective or septic, yet this is perhaps mainly due to the nature of the food too often furnished to this animal in a state of domestication. Not only is he fed on swill containing all kinds of over-kept food, in a state of more or less advanced decomposition, but he is kept in a pen or yard which soon becomes offensive, and following his natural instincts he roots around with his nose in the accumulating filth. When fed he plunges this foul snout in his liquid food, and as if this were not enough the fore feet follow, and if the trough is long enough the hind feet as well. Every available saprophytic microbe therefore finds its way down his throat, and the toxins from their growth outside the body accompany them to irritate or benumb the mucosa and fit it for the attacks of bacteria, which would otherwise have proved harmless. But in addition to all this, chemical irritants get into the swill and pave the way for the microbes. Salt, brine, and the various caustic washing powders used in washing dishes and tables find their way into the swill barrel often in quantity sufficient to irritate and poison. In experiments conducted at the N. Y. State Veterinary College the washing powders have been proved to be most deadly, and upon different farms, a mortality attributed to hog cholera, has again and again been arrested by preventing the entry of these powders into the swill barrel.

Symptoms. There is dullness, inappetence, hyperthermia (105°), a tendency to lie under the litter, leaving the herd, when raised the pig arches his back, moves stiffly with grunting, the tail and ears pendent, and the belly tender to the touch. The bowels are at first constipated, and thirst ardent, later diarrhœa may set in, and the skin and snout may have red blotches or patches as in hog cholera. Tympanies and abdominal rumblings are frequent. The animal becomes very dull, weak, emaciated, staggers in walking or is completely paraplegic.

It may end fatally in twenty-four or forty-eight hours, or death may be deferred for six or eight days or the disease may merge into the chronic form, or recover. The usual foul surroundings of the pig and the abundance of microbes and toxins taken in, serve to make enteritis in this animal much more redoubtable than in other domestic animals.

The lesions are usually common to stomach and intestine, and consist in abundant mucopurulent discharge, extensive congestion, points and extensive patches of blood extravasation, and of lymph infiltration, ulcers, congested peritoneum and mesenteric glands, and congestions and ecchymosis in distant organs.

The diagnosis between this affection and hog cholera on the one hand and swine plague on the other is not always easy, but it occurs in herds where no introduction of infection can be shown, there is always the evidence of a foul or unwholesome food, drink or environment, and the history of a number having been attacked at once and not one by one at varying intervals, as in infection, the disease does not spread to neighboring herds kept in better conditions, and there is an absence of the specific germ of hog cholera, motile, ærobic, non-liquefying, asporogenous, gas producing with glucose and fatal to guinea-pigs; or of that of swine plague, non-motile, ærobic, non-liquefying, asporogenous, not gas producing and not fatal to guinea-pigs, but fatal to rabbits.

Treatment. If the bowels are costive give castor oil 2 ounces, with great care to avoid choking, or shake 15 to 30 grains of calomel on the tongue and give flaxseed tea, or solution of slippery elm or gum which the animal will usually drink to slake its thirst. Or well boiled gruels may be substituted. Injections of soapsuds or Glauber salts with salicylate of soda should be added until the bowels respond, after which the salicylate alone may be given by both mouth and anus, or it may be replaced by one of the other non-poisonous antiseptics. Oil of turpentine alone or with ammonia may be applied on the abdomen and covered up until the skin is red and angry.

When appetite returns, gruels, linseed tea, boiled milk and other easily digested food may be given for some days until the stomach reacquires tone, when the patient may be slowly returned to its accustomed diet.

If the disease can be traced to alkaline washing powders, these should be first neutralized by vinegar, after which laudanum, antiseptics and mucilaginous gruels will be in order.

CATARRHAL ENTERITIS IN DOGS.

Causes: faulty feeding, close confinement, youth, distemper, over-exertion, meat diet, chills when heated and fatigued, ferments, bacteria, debility, ill health. Lesions: congested, softened, ulcerated, thickened mucosa, mucopurulent exudate, swollen intestinal and mesenteric glands, hyperplasia, polypi, follicular degeneration. Symptoms: dullness, segregation, inappetence, fever, arched back, abdominal rumbling, tenderness, retraction, constipation, diarrhœa, colics, vomiting, tenesmus, swollen red excoriated anus, icterus, weakness, debility, paralysis, if chronic, unthrifty skin, with eruptions, pallor, foul breath, tongue and gums, emaciation. Course: may recover in vigorous, or run down and die in old, young, weak, debilitated or ill. Relapses. Treatment: dietetic, laxative, in icteric, calomel, manna, enemata, warm bath, synapism, antiseptics, bismuth, sodium salicylate, in diarrhœa, bitters, astringent antiseptic tonics. Demulcents.

Causes. The dog is susceptible because of its varied, irregular, stimulating, often excessive diet, and its close confinement and lack of wholesome outdoor exercise. The conditions which predispose to or excite gastritis tend equally to enteritis. Youth, canine distemper, over-exertion, an exclusive meat diet, and chills from plunging into cold water when exhausted with hunting are to be specially noted. Spoiled meats charged with the germs of infection, or with putrefactive bacteria and their toxic products are common causes. Then any old standing disease or other cause of general debility will predispose to the attacks of such otherwise harmless germs. The irritation caused by intestinal parasites is an occasional factor.

Lesions. The mucosa is congested, ramified, spotted or dark and slaty; it together with the submucosa is swollen and infiltrated, and with points of ecchymosis, extravasation or even ulceration. The surface has a thick layer of mucopurulent matter. The solitary glands are swollen and charged with small lymphoid or pus cells and have a congested areola. The mesenteric glands are congested and the liver usually congested softened or mottled. In chronic cases there may be hyperplasia, polypi, cystoid degeneration of the follicles, etc.

Symptoms. There may be dullness, drowsiness, a seeking of seclusion, inappetence, hyperthermia (102 to 104°), ardent thirst, arched back, abdominal rumbling, tympany or tucked up tender abdomen, and a very temporary constipation, early giving place to diarrhœa. If however the inflammation is confined to the rectum and floating colon, constipation may persist. There are intermittent colics, frequent lying down and rising, or rising on the hind limbs only and when the belly is handled the patient may whine. The mouth is sour, hot, clammy, and red, and the dorsum of the tongue furred. The nose is dry and burning, the eyes congested, sunken and watery.

The fæces may be early soft or liquid and bilious, then as the defecations increase they pass through shades of gray to black or reddish black from the admixture of effused blood, and show bubbles and fœtor. Vomiting is usually an early symptom (septic matters in septic poisoning) and as the disease advances there is much fruitless straining and even protrusion of the congested and excoriated rectum. Icterus is common from infection of the gall ducts or the absorption of toxins into the portal vein. Weakness and debility amounting even to paresis may appear in the end.

In chronic cases there are emaciation and debility, unthrifty hair and skin, cutaneous eruptions, pallor of the mucosæ, fœtid breath, foul teeth and tongue, with irregular appetite, alternate constipation and diarrhœa, and, in case of implication of the duodenum and liver, icterus. The abdomen is retracted and tender.

Course. In strong vigorous dogs a spontaneous recovery is the rule, which is greatly favored by elimination through vomiting and purging. Fatal cases occur in puppies, in old, debilitated animals, or in such as have disease of the heart, lungs, or liver. Relapses are common and dangerous.

Treatment. Mild cases may respond to a purely dietetic treatment. Boiled milk, hot soup, or well cooked mush, and biscuit, are indicated, and with ½ oz. castor oil and 5 to 10 drops laudanum may suffice for treatment.

In the more severe cases, with some icterus, calomel 1 to 2 grs. with the oil, or with manna 5 drs. may be followed by emollient or soapy injections, and a warm bath or fomentations, the body being afterward carefully dried and warmly covered. This may be followed by a mustard poultice.

The usual antiseptics (salol 10 grs., naphthol 20 grs., creoline 20 drops, creosote 7 drops, or naphthaline 20 grs.) may be given with the laxative and should be given by both mouth and anus several times daily, in combination with nitrate of bismuth. In case of icterus give a mixture of calomel 5 grs., chalk 60 grs., in doses of three to five grains three or four times a day. Or salicylate of soda (10 grs.) may be given at the same intervals.

Quinia sulphate 5 grs., nux vomica 1 gr., tannic acid 1 gr., or silver nitrate ½ to 1 gr., or iron chloride 3 to 5 grs., may be employed when the bowels are much relaxed. Injections of well boiled rice or starch, or of gum or slippery elm, may be employed as adjuvants.

HEMORRHAGIC GASTRO-ENTERITIS OF THE DOG.

Definition. Causes: Spring, toxins, irritants, inflammation. Symptoms: Vomiting, diarrhœa, pendent head, arched back, retracted belly, black, bloody glairy frothing fæces, circulation excited, mucosæ red, yellow, or brown, death in two or three days. Diagnosis. Lesions: Stomach and intestines empty, mucosa of a dark blood red, thickened, liver and kidneys congested. Treatment: Little successful, intestinal disinfection, elimination, laxatives, wet compresses, enemata, heart stimulants, ergot, iron chloride.

Definition. A special form of septic enteritis, occurring as an epizootic and not transmissible by ingestion.

Causes. These are not well known. Occurring in a few dogs at one time in the same place, and time (by preference in spring) and then disappearing for months, and not being appreciably communicable by contagion or ingestion, it has the aspect of being caused by poisons, probably of the nature of toxins taken in with the food or water. Preëxisting inflammation has been alleged as a predisposing cause, the attack having followed superpurgation, or the administration of a handful of salt. Guinard found that the intravenous injection of tuberculin, mallein and other products of microbian growth produced lesions analogous to those of this disease.

Symptoms. The attack is usually sudden. The dog is seized with vomiting and diarrhœa and stands with head depressed, back arched and belly tucked up. The vomit is at first of alimentary matters, then of glairy mucus, or black and bloodstained material. The fæces are black, bloody, glairy, frothy, and abundant, fouling the tail and the hips. The abdomen is at first tense and extremely tender. The pulse is accelerated, the heart beats tumultuous, the breathing slow and temperature elevated. Redness of the visible mucosæ, often tinged more or less deeply with yellow, implies hepatic disorder or destruction of blood globules. Death may occur in two or three days.

The abruptness and violence of the attack, the violent vomiting and purging and the staining of the discharges with blood are to a large extent diagnostic.

Lesions. These are most noticeable in the stomach and intestines which are empty and of a dark blood red. The mucosa is thickened, gorged with blood, and showing deeper shades here and there where extravasation has occurred. The liver and kidneys are also deeply congested.