PSEUDOMEMBRANOUS PHARYNGITIS IN SWINE.
Prevalence in herds, in close pens, and in young. Relation to swine plague and hog cholera. Symptoms: sore throat, prostration, hoarse cough, yellowish discharge with shreds of false membrane, pellicles on mouth, fauces, tonsils. Diagnosis from swine plague. Treatment: Isolation, disinfection, antisepsis to throat, febrifuges.
This has long been recognized as a contagious affection, occurring especially where the animals were kept in herds and too often in close and filthy pens. These are more liable in youth than in maturity, partly no doubt because the older animals have already suffered and attained to an immunity. Modern observation has shown that pharyngitis with formation of false membranes is especially common in swine plague, and the present tendency is to refer all such cases to that category. It is however altogether probable that the occurrence of local irritation with the addition of an irritant or septic microbe altogether distinct from those of swine plague or hog cholera, gives rise at times to this exudative angina. Certain it is that septic poisoning with the food is not at all uncommon in the hog, in the absence of these infectious diseases.
The symptoms are those of severe sore throat with profound prostration, a hoarse, painful cough, a yellowish discharge from nose and mouth, and great muscular weakness. The base of the tongue, tonsils and soft palate are red and tumid with here and there grayish or yellowish patches of false membranes. The identification of swine plague may be made by the history of the outbreak, the number of animals affected, the tendency to pulmonary inflammation, the enlarged lymph glands, the presence of the non-motile bacillus which does not generate gas in saccharine media, and which readily kills rabbits and Guinea-pigs with pure cultures of the germ.
Treatment will depend largely on the nature of the attack—swine plague or simple pseudomembranous infection. Isolation, cleansing and disinfection will be demanded in both cases. In swine plague all additional precautions to prevent its spread must be resorted to. In the simpler exudative inflammations the antiseptic local treatment and general febrifuge measures will be demanded.