CIRRHOSIS IN CATTLE.
This has been recorded by different observers and usually as the result of some obstacle to the circulation, or of catarrh and obstruction of the biliary passages. Morot saw it in young calves, which showed greatly enlarged liver (in one case 24 lbs.) and kidneys, the former containing numerous cysts and marked sclerous thickening around the vessels. This advancing thickening of the connective tissue, causes increasing firmness of the liver and absorption, distortion and diminution of the lobules. Albrecht describes a chronic interstitial hepatitis with caseated centres (nontuberculous) many of them an inch in diameter. The liver is brown or grayish with whiter callosities which extend into its substance and make points of attachment to the diaphragm or other adjacent organ. The contrast between the fibrous layers and the hepatic tissue has been likened to a checker board (Höhmann). The enlarged liver may weigh 30 lbs.; in one remarkable case it weighed 300 lbs. (Adam). The bile is of a light color and mixed with mucus.
Symptoms. The symptoms are indefinite: a gradually increasing jaundice, the passage of yellowish red urine becoming more and more red and albuminous, and finally coagulating on the walls of the urethra or on the litter, chronic indigestion, salivation (Schäffer), weakness, breathlessness and more or less fever may give indications of the disorder. Höhmann failed to find tenderness of the right hypochondrium. The disease is liable to go on to a fatal issue, so that it is often sought to prepare the animal for the butcher.
Treatment will follow the same line as in the horse. Green food, pasturage, open air life, saline laxatives, and alkalies with a free use of potassium iodide to check the sclerosis will be indicated.