CROUPOUS PNEUMONIA IN SHEEP.
Causes, damp, cold soils, inclement weather, cold rains, hard driving, shearing or washing in cold weather, change to a cold climate, or from a warm barn, hot barns, heavy fleeces, sudden plethora. Symptoms, in congestive cases, in inflammatory. Treatment, preventive, hygienic, antiphlogistic, laxative, febrifuge, derivative.
This disease is not infrequent in these animals, occurring enzootically in low, wet pastures; or from cold storms of wind, sleet or drenching rains, particularly after hard driving, or shearing; or from washing during inclement weather. Dressing with mercurial ointment in cases of scab is a frequent cause of pneumonia and death in Lincolnshire and various other English counties. Lastly M. Seron in Hurtrel d’Arboval’s “Dictionaire” describes its prevalence in Seine-Inférieure among low conditioned sheep subjected abruptly to a very nutritious diet. The hot buildings, heavy fleeces, and sudden plethora, appear to conduce to dangerous pulmonary congestions. The symptoms do not differ materially from those seen in the ox except so far as they are modified by the fact that the disease often terminates fatally before hepatization has been established and the symptoms and post mortem appearances are those of congestion and sanguineous engorgement of the lung rather than of hepatization.
This engorged state of the lungs it is which has led Youatt and others to describe them erroneously as “gangrenous” and shepherds to name the disease “rot of the lights.” The condition is that of acute congestion and analogous to that seen in congested lungs in the horse.
The treatment ought to be chiefly preventive and will consist in the avoidance of the causes above indicated.
When the disease has set in, fresh air, and general comfort, bleeding if in the very earliest stages and in a strong patient, purging (3 ounces sulphate of soda and ¼ lb. treacle in warm gruel) and a free supply of nitre (about ½ an ounce daily to each) in the water or gruel supplied are the leading indications. As a counterirritant aqua ammonia acts well being sufficiently confined by the fleece.