Part 55

Injection of the genital passages with a sulphate of copper solution (1 to 2 per cent) for several weeks in succession effected a cure.

INFECTIOUS ULCEROUS STOMATITIS IN LAMBS AND KIDS.

Prevails in France. Predisposing causes, bad hygiene. Specific cause, streptococcus. Pathogenesis, to lambs and kids through sucking, drinking, feeding; inoculable on Guinea-pig, not rabbit. Lesions: like thrush, congested patches, with curd-like concretion; epithelium, leucocytes, microbe; in bad cases gastro-enteritis, hepatitis, or pneumonia. Symptoms: hyperthermia, refusal of teat, froth on lips, dulness, debility, emaciation, death in 15 days; in mouth, concretions and red raw sores; cough, hurried breathing, diarrhœa; subacute cases have little fever, or infection. Mortality 8 per cent. in acute cases, none in subacute. Prevention: separation and disinfection of fold. Treatment: antiseptics to mouth; borax, sulphites, chlorate of potash, sodium salicylate, iron chloride, copperas, silver nitrate. Feed through tube or syringe. Internally, sulphites.

This is found in all parts of France, as described by Besnoit.

Causes. The predisposition, as in the case of many other fatal internal inflammations, depends largely on faulty hygiene, foul, ill ventilated, hot, close, damp, overcrowded folds, without sunshine, drainage or free access to the outer air.

The specific cause is a large coccus, isolated or in chains of 2, 3, 4 or more (streptococcus), and found abundantly in the pultaceous buccal exudate, and in the internal lesions developed by autoinfection. It grows readily in bouillon in the form of a precipitate in the bottom of the liquid, in gelatine and glucose in very small, thin colonies, and on potato in creamy masses. It is stained by anilin and by Gram’s (iodine) preparation.

Pathogenesis. Inoculable on the Guinea pig, it is harmless to the rabbit. It is readily conveyed to lambs and kids by inoculation, or through the teats, by licking, drinking, feeding, etc. Acute cases are very virulent, subacute very little so. Isolated cases of the latter are not uncommon.

Lesions. The buccal lesions are like those of thrush (muguet). The mucosa is more or less congested and reddened with raised patches, of varying extent, of white, curdy looking concretions, composed of excess of epithelial cells and leucocytes with an abundant exudate. The specific coccus is present in great numbers and often in almost pure cultures. The internal lesions found in the more acute and fatal cases are mostly in the form of gastro-enteritis, hepatitis and pneumonia, containing the specific cocci, and due to the inhalation or swallowing of the virulent buccal products.

Symptoms. In the acute cases an intense hyperthermia is the first symptom, speedily followed by refusal to suck, the accumulation of froth around the lips, great dulness and lassitude, prostration, rapidly advancing debility, and emaciation, and death in 15 days in a condition of marasmus and inanition. When the mouth is opened the curdy white or yellowish white patches of exudation are seen with an abundant glairy mucus, and occasionally red, raw, angry patches from which the morbid growth has been detached. The symptoms of pneumonia or of muco-enteritis are usually in evidence, with or without diarrhœal or dysenteric discharges. Acute cases are extremely contagious.

In subacute cases the lesions are confined to the buccal mucosa, as curdy white, raised concretions with ulcerous surfaces, frothy lips and refusal of the teat, but without marked hyperthermia or constitutional disturbance. Contagion is little marked, the disease appearing enzoötically in flocks, or even as but one case in each of several flocks.

Mortality. Eight per cent. of acute cases may perish, but the subacute nearly all recover.

Prevention. When the disease has appeared in a flock, or in its vicinity, the mouths of the lambs should be examined daily and affected subjects and their dams carefully separated. A thorough disinfection of the fold is imperative.

Treatment. Use antiseptics on the mouth, selecting the non-poisonous articles. Borax may be rubbed freely on the patches. Solutions of sulphite, bisulphite or hyposulphite of soda (1 oz. to 1 qt.) may be used at frequent intervals on the mouth; chlorate of potash (5:100), sodium salicylate (1:100), iron chloride (1:100) may be used. Ulcerous patches may be cauterized by iron sulphate, silver nitrate, or the potential cautery. Besnoit advises mercuric chloride (1:1,000) for cutaneous lesions, but this would be unsuitable for either mouth or lips. The strength must be sustained by the dam’s milk given through a tube or syringe. For gastric lesions the sulphites may be given.

CONTAGIOUS ABORTION.

Definition: Premature expulsion of non-viable fœtus. Synonyms. Susceptible animals: cows, goats, sows, mares. Accessory causes: Ice cold drinks at periods of ovulation, frozen aliments, ice cold bath or rain storm, mechanical injuries, unwholesome fermentescible food, indigestible foods, close stabling, heavy milking, early breeding, inbreeding, stagnant water, ergot, smut, vegetable irritants or ecbolics, constitutional diseases, irritation of generative organs, death of fœtus, urinary calculi, odor of carcass or carrion, contagion, experimental infection between cows, between mare and cow, relation to omphalitis. Nocard’s streptococci and bacilli, Bang’s bacillus with best growth in two distinct grades of oxygenation, Galtier’s observations, bacterium of the Colon group in America, infection of the calves (pneumonia). Various kinds of infectious abortion. Acquired immunity, variable in different forms. Immunized cow still infecting. Symptoms. Lesions. Abortion in mares. Therapeutics. Prevention: Protection of a sound herd, guarantee with purchase, government control, precautions with male or unimpregnated female, with pregnant. Extinction in a herd, separation, disinfection, disposal of abortion, manure, urine, disinfection of animal, of genital organs, precautions as to service, new born, fields, ewes. Disinfectants, subcutem or in muscles.

Definition. The premature expulsion of the product of conception before it is viable out of the womb. Strictly speaking, a parturition in which the offspring is so far matured as to be viable is a premature parturition, while if it is non-viable it is an abortion. Vulgarly, however, as applied to herds, the term is used for any early parting with the fœtus. In this wider sense infectious abortion is the premature expulsion of the fœtus owing to an infectious catarrh of the womb, transmitted from one animal to another by the transference of the microbe.

Synonyms. Infectious Abortion, Enzoötic Abortion, Epizoötic Abortion.

Animals Affected. Abortion is most common in cows, and less frequent in ewes, goats, sows and mares.

Forms and Accessory Causes of Abortion. It was formerly supposed that abortion in herds was mainly due to mechanical and chemical agencies acting injuriously on the system, and in adopting the explanation of a particulate, transferrable, infectious agent for the habitual widespread forms of the disease, we should not forget these accessory causes, many of which by themselves cause sporadic abortions without the intervention of an infectious element.

The free consumption of ice cold water by the healthy dam causes active gastro-intestinal peristalsis and vigorous movements of the advanced fœtus, which can be seen or felt in the right flank, so that this is often resorted to, to determine whether the animal is pregnant or not. If this is frequently repeated or carried to excess in susceptible animals it will at times cause abortions. As in all other cases of mechanical or physiological disturbance, this is most operative at those periods of constitutional changes, which if the animal had been unimpregnated would have brought about ovulation and œstrum.

The greedy ingestion of cold aliments, like frozen roots, or green vegetation covered with hoar frost, may have a similar action, the more so that such aliments are extremely fermentescible and liable to cause tympany and undue pressure on the gravid womb.

Even without ingestion, exposure to cold rain or snow storms or the plunging in ice cold water tends to produce excessive peristalsis and fœtal movements and thereby prove injurious.

Mechanical injuries to the abdomen as crushing by a gate, kicks, hooking with horns or tusks, hounding with dogs, riding of each other when a cow is in heat, are liable to produce congestions, detachment of fœtal membranes, and even death of the fœtus.

Very fermentescible foods like those following a wet season or bad harvest, or those made of the leafy albuminous plants like lucerne (alfalfa), sainfoin and clover, act injuriously in the way of causing tympanies and compressions, but it must also be recognized that we are here dealing with fodders abounding in bacterial ferments, and that some of their products may act physiologically as ecbolics, even if the bacteria themselves do not colonize the genital passages as infections.

Insufficient food or very innutritious forage, too close stabling, heavy milking, early breeding (dam or sire), inbreeding, are liable to lower the general stamina and throw the system more open to the action of other factors.

Stagnant, corrupt drinking water has been charged with causing abortion, and the trouble has ceased when it has been withdrawn, but it is difficult to estimate its value in different cases—disturbing digestion, fermentation, poisoning, or introducing of actual infection.

Ergoted grasses and smut in maize, wheat or oats, have been often charged with wide spread abortions, and though each has in turn been administered in large and continuous doses without causing abortion, this does not invalidate the many cases in which it manifestly had that effect, nor does it show that obstetricians have been mistaken in their almost immemorial trust in ergot as an ecbolic. It must be recognized, however, that grown under different conditions, of sunshine and shade, and harvested at different stages of its development, ergot varies greatly in its physiological action, as it does also from having been overkept and thus one specimen is effective or dangerous while another is absolutely ineffective. The specific action of the alkaloids in determining contraction of involuntary muscular fibre, is seen alike when used medicinally and when acting as an accidental toxic agent in causing spasms, nervous torpor or paralysis, delirium; gangrene of the feet, tail or tip of the ear; or contraction of the womb and expulsion of its contents. Like other agents mentioned ergot is at times an active ecbolic when coöperating with other similarly operating agencies.

Irritant vegetables of various kinds are to be dreaded. Such as act on the bowels and kidneys, keeping up a constant diarrhœa and diuresis, are quite liable to cause abortion in susceptible subjects. Savin, tansy and rue have obtained a bad reputation in this sense.