FATTY DEGENERATION OF THE HEART.
Causes, improvement in the direction of easy fattening, inactive life, best breeds of butcher cattle and pigs suffer. Symptoms, weak, irregular, intermittent pulse, palpitation, unfitness for exertion, general heart symptoms.
In addition to the fibrous and bony transformations to which the substance of the heart’s walls is subject, a fatty metamorphosis is frequently met with. In most cases the fat accumulates in great masses externally, but in others the muscular tissue has to a greater or less extent lost its natural structure and fatty granules have taken the place of the sarcous elements. In overfed oxen the right cavities of the heart rarely escape dilatation, and this condition is very often accompanied by the fatty change. Virchow has shown that highbred English pigs imported into Germany are subject to a similar affection of the heart and of the entire muscular system. It may occur during wasting diseases and from phosphorous poisoning.
The symptoms are weak, irregular and intermitting pulse, palpitation on excitement, weakness of the heart’s impulse in the intervals, incapacity for exertion, sighing, Cheyne-Stokes respiration, loss of control over the limbs when hurriedly driven and tendency to dropsy. It is often associated with dilatation, is rarely distinguishable from it in life, and is equally beyond remedial measures. The feeding animals most commonly affected can usually be fattened if removed from all sources of excitement. In case of phosphorous poisoning improvement takes place when the poison is stopped.