ULCERATION OF THE INTESTINES.
Symptom or sequel of other disease, or from traumas, caustics, neoplasms, peptic ulcers, verminous thrombosis, tubercle. Catarrhal erosion, peptic, deep, round ulcer, calculi with irregular ulcers, cord ulcer at mesenteric attachment, small, follicular, grouped ulcers, sloughing ulcers of infectious diseases, circular projecting, button like ulcers of hog cholera, microbes. Symptoms: diarrhœa, black, or red, sloughs, fever, blood stained vomit, manipulation. Treatment: for foreign body, poison, or infectious disease, careful diet, antiseptics.
Ulceration of the intestines is commonly a symptom or sequel of other intestinal disorder, such as intestinal catarrh, impaction, calculus, foreign body, parasites, petechial fever, influenza, glanders, rinderpest, Southern cattle fever, hog cholera, pneumoenteritis, rabies, canine distemper. Then there are ulcers, caused by sharp pointed bodies, by caustic agents ingested, and by obstructive changes in neoplasms. Peptic ulcers may occur in the duodenum as in the stomach. Finally local disturbances of the circulation and especially such as attend on verminous thrombosis, are at once predisposing and exciting causes of ulceration. Tuberculosis and other neoplasms are additional causes.
The ulcers may vary in different cases. In catarrh there is usually superficial desquamation of the epithelium, and erosions rather than deep ulcers. The peptic ulcer forms on the dependent wall of the gut, where the gastric secretions settle, and assumes a more or less perfectly circular outline (round ulcer). Those due to calculus or impaction, may be irregular patches mostly on the unattached side of the intestine and resulting from necrosis of the parts most exposed to pressure. The ulcers resulting from cords stretched along inside the bowel, are in the form of longitudinal sores on the attached or mesenteric side of the intestine, where the wall being shorter the cord continually presses. Follicular ulcerations are usually small, deep excavations, commonly arranged in groups. Ulcers connected with neoplasms have an irregular form determined by that of the morbid growth. In infectious diseases the ulcers are round or irregular, resulting from circumscribed sloughs. In most of the infectious diseases the tendency appears to be to attack the intervals between the folds of the mucosa, probably because the bacteria of ulceration find a safer lodgement in such places. In the hog cholera ulcers the older ulcers tend to the circular form with thick mass of necrotic tissue in the form of plates or scales imbedded in the bottom and projecting above the adjacent surface of the mucosa. As a rule the microbes which in the different cases preside over the necrobiosis are found in the depth and walls of the ulcers.
The symptoms are largely those of the diseases of which the ulcers are a concomitant or result. There is usually diarrhœa, which is generally black from extravasated blood, and may be marked by fresher red bloody striæ. Sloughs of variable size are not at all uncommon in the fæces. Hyperthermia is usually more intense than in ordinary chronic enteritis, indicating the action on the heat producing centres of the necrosing microbes and their toxins. In pigs and dogs there may be vomiting of dark blood stained material or of feculent matter. In the small animals it may be possible to feel through the walls of the abdomen the thickening of the intestine at and around the seat of any extensive ulcer.
Treatment. So far as this is not the treatment of the foreign bodies, poisons, or specific fevers which cause the ulcers, it consists mainly in careful dieting and the use of antiseptics such as subcarbonate of bismuth, salol, salicylic acid, sodium salicylate or naphthol.