Part 5

Lesions and Symptoms. There is the usual dainty feeding and disposition to masticate imperfectly or even to drop the partly insalivated morsels, working of the lips, the formation of froth on their margins, and the drivelling of saliva in long strings or filaments. As the disease advances this becomes bloody and fœtid. The local lesions may be at first like white pulpy spots of softened and degenerating epithelium, which is exceptionally, raised in blisters. This is followed by desquamation and the formation of open sores which are indolent, and show a disposition to further erosion and extension. They may be rounded or irregularly indented in their borders, and contain a brownish, blackish or greenish viscid debris. They vary widely, however, in general appearance and in their disposition to speedy or sluggish healing, being apparently influenced by the nature of the pathogenic microbe and the susceptibility of the subject. In some cases the molecular degeneration extends deeply into the mucosa, and even over the edges of the lips into the adjacent skin. Recovery and complete cicatrization may take place in one week, or successive outbreaks may take place in the same animal lasting in all for months as in Cadeac’s case associated with chronic abscess of the mesentery.

Treatment. The first consideration is to correct the debility on which the affection is based. Iron and bitter tonics, mineral acids, and nourishing food given in the form of soft mashes, pulped roots, or farinas, which will require little mastication, and the antiseptic cleansing of the mouth after each meal are the main features of the treatment. As antiseptics, vinegar is inimical to the microbes of the mouth, which affect alkaline media, borax, boric acid, carbolic acid, sulphurous acid, the sulphites and hyposulphites, permanganate of potash, chlorate of potash, creolin, and sulphate or chloride of iron furnish a sufficient choice of comparatively nontoxic agents. Ulcers may be touched with tincture of iodine, lunar caustic, or sulphate of copper.

ULCERATIVE STOMATITIS (DIPHTHERIA) IN CALVES.

Accessory causes. Infection. Experimental inoculation. Bacillus, grows on blood serum. Lesions in mouth, nose, air passages, intestines, digits. Symptoms: difficult sucking, fever, swollen, whitish spots on buccal mucosa, phagadenic sores, fœtor, symptoms of extending disease, anorexia, debility, prostration. Duration. Diagnosis from foot and mouth disease, from actinomycosis, from tuberculosis. Prevention: cleanliness, antisepsis, segregation, diet of dam, sterilized milk. Treatment: antiseptic and eliminating: locally antiseptic.

This has been observed at frequent intervals in calves, as a serious, fatal, communicable disorder occurring in the first few weeks of life.

Causes. It has been attributed to unhygienic conditions of the dams, close, damp, impure stables, unwholesome or spoiled food, and privations of various kinds, and these, in all probability, increase the susceptibility. The congestion and traumatism connected with the cutting of the teeth is another predisposing cause. The ultimate cause is, however, the contagious element and the disease has been conveyed to healthy lambs by the introduction into their mouths of the necrotic products from the diseased subjects (Dammann). Sheep inoculated in the conjunctiva presented violent conjunctivitis in forty-eight hours. Inoculated rabbits died of septicæmia. Mice showed the same symptoms as calves, while guinea pigs showed an abscess only at the seat of inoculation (Löffler).

The identity of the germ has not been fully demonstrated. Dammann found a micrococcus, but testimony from the inoculation of its pure cultures is wanting, and the buccal mucosa of the sucking calf is full of varied germs some of which are irritating and pathogenic to an injured mucosa.

Löffler found in the epithelial concretions (false membranes) of the mouth and intestines, a bacillus of half the thickness of the bacillus of malignant œdema, five times as long as broad and usually connected with its fellows to form filaments. He failed to obtain cultures of this in nutrient gelatine, but grew it successfully in blood serum from a calf. Transferred to fresh serum the culture failed. The pure culture does not seem to have been tried on the calf.

According to Dammann the lesions occur indiscriminately in the mouth, the nose, the larynx, trachea, lungs, the intestinal canal and the interdigital space.

It has been suggested that the mouth of the calf rendered susceptible by the congestion caused by suction, is infected by licking the previously infected umbilicus.

Symptoms. There are the usual symptoms of indisposition to suck, salivation, redness of the buccal mucosa, and general indisposition. In two or three days the mucosa shows raised, pulpy, white or grayish patches about a line in diameter. These gradually soften and break down and in four or five days leave dark red angry sores one-sixth to one-third inch in diameter dotted with grayish points and surrounded by a congested areola. These exhale an offensive odor and tend to extend in superficial area and in depth, invading indiscriminately the various subjacent tissues. The lips may be perforated, the muscles, cartilages, periosteum, and periodontal membrane invaded, the teeth may be shed, and the alveoli filled with the offensive debris of ulceration. Swelling of the throat may follow from implication of the pharynx and its lymph glands, symptoms of laryngitis, bronchitis, and pneumonia may succeed, also infective gastritis and enteritis. These various parts may be infected by the direct transference of the infecting saliva, but the germ is also held to be transmitted through the blood to implicate distant organs.

Appetite is gradually lost, a blackish, fœtid diarrhœa, sets in and the calf is sunk in a profound prostration and debility due partly to the enforced abstinence and colliquative diarrhœa, but much more to the absorption of toxic matters. Death may ensue from the sixth to the twelfth day. In case of recovery a month may be requisite for the completion of convalescence.

Diagnosis. This has to be distinguished especially from aphthous fever by the absence of the large, and clearly defined vesicles of that disease, by the fact that the mammary region and interdigital spaces usually escape, and especially by the immunity of the dam and of other more mature animals. From actinomycosis of the tongue it is diagnosed by its more rapid progress, by the marked constitutional depression, and prostration, and by the absence of the marked induration of the actinomycotic organ (holzzunge) and by the sulphur yellow pin head-like nodules of actinomyces. Tuberculosis is rare in the first weeks after birth in calves, and never makes the rapid progress nor causes the profound depression of this disorder.

Prevention. The first object must be to destroy the infection, and the second to obviate the susceptibility of the young animal. The clearing away of all accumulations of litter, filth, and even fodder from the stable proper, including the stalls where the dams lie, should be followed by a thorough whitewashing or disinfection, with sulphate of copper or of iron, or even mercuric chloride, (1:500.) If the disease has already appeared in a stable the calves should be penned singly to avoid the possibility of infection through sucking each others navels. In all cases an antiseptic (tannin, carbolic acid) should be applied to the navel of the new born. The food of the dam and nurse should be nutritive and free from any suspicion of mustiness or decomposition, and when possible the calf should be allowed to draw its own milk from the teat. When this cannot be allowed, artificial feeding should be surrounded by all the safeguards, named under acute indigestion of calves.

Treatment. Cadeac strongly recommends ½ oz. common salt daily with the food, or alcohol ¾ oz., or a strong infusion of coffee mixed with the milk. Lenglen advises quinoa in the form of tincture, ½ to 1 oz. McGillivray sulphate of soda. Tincture of chloride of iron 30 drops in an ounce of water with each meal would be an excellent resort.

Locally antiseptics are our main reliance. Naphthol, naphthalin, salicylic acid, or salicylate of soda, may be applied directly to the diseased mucous membrane. Tincture of chloride of iron in water (1:2) is one of the best agents (James). Carbolic acid 1 drachm in 6 oz. water, and 1 oz. alcohol has been used safely and with excellent results (Lenglen). Like most other antiseptics, however, this latter must be used with caution as regards the amount. No actively poisonous antiseptic is admissible. The antiseptic should be swabbed over the whole interior of the mouth after each meal.

In case of deep gangrenous masses excision and antiseptics are demanded.

ULCERATIVE STOMATITIS IN LAMBS AND KIDS.

Causes: Accessory, locality, youth, debility, unsuitable food, impure air, parasitism, contagion. Bacteria. Symptoms: difficult sucking, frothing, salivation, buccal redness and swelling, white, softened patches, suppuration, granulation, fœtor, emaciation, debility, bowel symptoms, respiratory. Duration. Treatment: Artificial feeding, antisepsis, disinfection, mild caustics, etc.

Causes. This has been noticed as an enzootic affection in young and debilitated animals, while the mature and more robust ones escape. Anæmic lambs, those that are fed on watery, innutritious materials (potatoes, grains, waste of sugar factories), those kept in close confinement, indoors, and those that suffer from distomatosis show the disease. Impure air, damp, dark places and impure water have their influence. The disease is manifestly contagious, but the infecting microbe has not been demonstrated. It was formerly supposed to be the oidium albicans, the fungus of muguet, but Neumann demonstrated its absence, and though he found leptothrix buccalis, bacilli, spirochcæte and micrococci he failed to show that any one of these in pure culture would cause the disease. Rivolta charged it on bacterium subtile agnorum and Berdt on the polydesmus exitiosus which according to him the sheep contract from eating rape cake. The withdrawal of the cake led to a rapid recovery.

Symptoms. The disease may begin insidiously without at first very marked symptoms. Sucking is painful and infrequent, an acid froth collects about the mouth, and white patches appear on the gums or other part of the buccal mucosa, with at times redness and swelling, and the separation of the gums from the teeth. The white epithelial patches soften and are easily detached, leaving bright red patches, which bleed easily, and tend to extension and coalescence. These are covered by a viscid mucopurulent matter, and may become the seat of granulations, or they may involve the subjacent tissues in ulceration causing evulsion of the teeth, or necrosis of the jaw bone. The odor of the mouth is fœtid. Prostration and emaciation set in, and often bear a ratio to the extension of the disease to the digestive and respiratory organs. This is manifested by uneasy movements of the hind feet, shaking of the tail, frequent lying down and rising, constipation or diarrhœa: or by cough, snuffling breathing, swelling of the submaxillary and pharyngeal glands, and hurried, oppressed breathing. The complication of vesicular and pustular eruption has been noticed. Death may occur in eight or ten days, or more commonly recovery ensues.

Treatment must proceed on the same lines as in the calf. Artificial feeding on gruels, with antiseptic washes for the mouth at each meal are indicated. Chlorate of potash, chloride of lime, borax, sulphites and hyposulphites of soda, carbolic acid, and the salts of iron afford an ample field for selection. For ulcers, a pointed stick of nitrate of silver, or a solution of muriatic acid in three times its volume of water, applied by means of a glass rod or pledget of cotton will serve a good purpose.

ULCERATIVE STOMATITIS IN SWINE.

Causes: improper food; filthy pens; debility; toxins of specific diseases; microbian infection. Symptoms: inappetence; grinding teeth; champing jaws; salivation; fœtor; buccal swelling and redness; pulpy spots; desquamation; ulcers; pharyngeal, enteric and osseous complications. Treatment: Segregation; disinfection; local antiseptic washes; tonics.

This is the Scorbutus of Friedberger and Fröhner, the gloss-anthrax of Benion.

Causes. It has been attributed to insufficient or irritant food, to damp, close pens, and to chronic debilitating diseases and all these act as predisposing causes. In gastritis and in infectious fevers like hog cholera, swine plague, and rouget (hog erysipelas) the spots of congestion and petechiæ on the buccal mucous membrane may become the starting points for ulcerative inflammations. These conditions appear, however, to be supplemented by infection from bacteria present in the mouth or introduced in food and water, and as in the case of other domestic animals the most successful treatment partakes largely of disinfectant applications.

Symptoms. Loss of appetite, grinding of the teeth, champing of the jaws, the formation of froth round the lips, fœtor of the breath, redness of the gums and tongue, and the formation of vesicles or white patches which fall off leaving red angry sores. These may extend forming deep unhealthy ulcers, with increasing salivation and fœtor. As the disease advances the initial dullness and prostration become more profound, and debility and emaciation advance rapidly. Unless there is early improvement an infective pharyngitis, or enteritis sets in, manifestly determined by the swallowing of virulent matters from the mouth, and swelling, redness and tenderness of the throat, or colics and offensive black diarrhœa hasten a fatal issue. Rachitis may be a prominent complication, as it seems in some instances to be a predisposing cause.

Treatment. Isolate the healthy from the diseased and apply disinfection to all exposed articles and places. Employ local antiseptics as on the other animals. Sulphuric or hydrochloric acids in 50 times their volume of water, or tincture of iron, chlorate of potash, or chloride of ammonia, or borax have been used successfully. Bitters and aromatics have also been strongly recommended.