PHARYNGO-LARYNGITIS IN CATTLE.
Susceptibility. Causes, symptoms, cough, salivation, wheezing, lachrymation, muzzle dry, tender throat, dysphagia, disturbed innervation and circulation, hyperthermia. Duration. Abscess. Treatment, laxative, local treatment, lancing.
Cattle are less subject to sore throat than horses. The skin appears less sensitive to the influences of cold and heat. The ox is not subjected to the same severe exertions. It is rarely seen to sweat, the moisture passing off from the surface as insensible perspiration only. The disease, however, recognizes the same causes as in the horse, though these are manifestly less injurious.
Symptoms. The disease usually affects at once the larynx and pharynx so that the symptoms are somewhat modified. In the simplest form there is only a small, hacking cough, a flow of saliva from the mouth and some loss of appetite but no fever. In more acute cases the breathing is loud and wheezing, the cough, soft and rattling, is followed by a free discharge of mucous from the mouth, the nostrils and eyes are red, the muzzle dry, the pulse accelerated and full, the throat tender to the touch, and swallowing difficult, part of the food and drink being rejected through the nose. If the larynx is chiefly involved the loud noise in breathing is the predominant symptom and sometimes almost the only one.
Course, etc. The cough and other symptoms are usually moderated with the access of the abundant secretion on the second or third day, and recovery is perfect on the eighth to the fifteenth. If abscess results, to which there is a far greater liability than in the horse, it may not burst till the twentieth day and the case is correspondingly protracted. This should be carefully distinguished from the deposits of tubercle which take place around the throat in cattle. In rare cases the disease becomes chronic.
Treatment does not differ from that advised for the horse except in the greater safety of purgatives which must in this case be saline (Epsom or glauber salts one to two pounds), and in the greater ease with which local treatment can be applied owing to the shortness of the soft palate. When abscess forms it must be encouraged by poulticing and opened with the knife or lancet as soon as it points.