NON-VERMINOUS INTESTINAL CONGESTION IN SOLIPEDS.
Causes: sudden changes to green food, or leguminous fodder, newly harvested fodder, frosted food, iced water, microbian infection, toxin poisoning, intestinal fermentations, experiments, volvulus, invagination, strangulation, compression, atony. Symptoms: as in verminous aneurisms. Diagnosis: absence of worms, presence of other causes. Treatment.
Causes. Acute intestinal congestion apart from verminous aneurisms is ascribed to a variety of causes. Sudden changes of food especially to green food, in spring, or to some of the leguminous fodder plants (alfalfa, cowpea, clover, tares, vetches), newly harvested grain or hay, fodders covered with hoarfrost, iced water, and microbian infection or poisoning with toxins or other irritant products of intestinal fermentations. Experimentally the injection into the circulation of pyogenic toxins and putrid matters has determined intestinal congestion and hemorrhage. In the same way musty hay or grain have proved the occasion of these attacks. Finally mechanical blocking of the circulation of the intestine as by volvulus, invagination, strangulated hernia, or even compression by bulky food has seemed to operate in this way.
It ought to be borne in mind that the habitual microbes of the healthy bowel may become pathogenic when brought in contact with a mucosa which is the seat of irritation, atony or any condition of debility.
Symptoms and Lesions. The verminous aneurisms and thrombosis aside, the symptoms and lesions of this form of congestion so closely resemble those of the verminous affection that it seems needless to repeat them.
Diagnosis is difficult but the absence of worms in the affected animals and their fellows, and the presence of some one of the other recognized causes may lead to a fair conclusion.
Treatment of the affection is more hopeful than in the verminous affection, and may be conducted on the same general lines.