ULCERATIVE STOMATITIS (DIPHTHERIA) IN CALVES.
Accessory causes. Infection. Experimental inoculation. Bacillus, grows on blood serum. Lesions in mouth, nose, air passages, intestines, digits. Symptoms: difficult sucking, fever, swollen, whitish spots on buccal mucosa, phagadenic sores, fœtor, symptoms of extending disease, anorexia, debility, prostration. Duration. Diagnosis from foot and mouth disease, from actinomycosis, from tuberculosis. Prevention: cleanliness, antisepsis, segregation, diet of dam, sterilized milk. Treatment: antiseptic and eliminating: locally antiseptic.
This has been observed at frequent intervals in calves, as a serious, fatal, communicable disorder occurring in the first few weeks of life.
Causes. It has been attributed to unhygienic conditions of the dams, close, damp, impure stables, unwholesome or spoiled food, and privations of various kinds, and these, in all probability, increase the susceptibility. The congestion and traumatism connected with the cutting of the teeth is another predisposing cause. The ultimate cause is, however, the contagious element and the disease has been conveyed to healthy lambs by the introduction into their mouths of the necrotic products from the diseased subjects (Dammann). Sheep inoculated in the conjunctiva presented violent conjunctivitis in forty-eight hours. Inoculated rabbits died of septicæmia. Mice showed the same symptoms as calves, while guinea pigs showed an abscess only at the seat of inoculation (Löffler).
The identity of the germ has not been fully demonstrated. Dammann found a micrococcus, but testimony from the inoculation of its pure cultures is wanting, and the buccal mucosa of the sucking calf is full of varied germs some of which are irritating and pathogenic to an injured mucosa.
Löffler found in the epithelial concretions (false membranes) of the mouth and intestines, a bacillus of half the thickness of the bacillus of malignant œdema, five times as long as broad and usually connected with its fellows to form filaments. He failed to obtain cultures of this in nutrient gelatine, but grew it successfully in blood serum from a calf. Transferred to fresh serum the culture failed. The pure culture does not seem to have been tried on the calf.
According to Dammann the lesions occur indiscriminately in the mouth, the nose, the larynx, trachea, lungs, the intestinal canal and the interdigital space.
It has been suggested that the mouth of the calf rendered susceptible by the congestion caused by suction, is infected by licking the previously infected umbilicus.
Symptoms. There are the usual symptoms of indisposition to suck, salivation, redness of the buccal mucosa, and general indisposition. In two or three days the mucosa shows raised, pulpy, white or grayish patches about a line in diameter. These gradually soften and break down and in four or five days leave dark red angry sores one-sixth to one-third inch in diameter dotted with grayish points and surrounded by a congested areola. These exhale an offensive odor and tend to extend in superficial area and in depth, invading indiscriminately the various subjacent tissues. The lips may be perforated, the muscles, cartilages, periosteum, and periodontal membrane invaded, the teeth may be shed, and the alveoli filled with the offensive debris of ulceration. Swelling of the throat may follow from implication of the pharynx and its lymph glands, symptoms of laryngitis, bronchitis, and pneumonia may succeed, also infective gastritis and enteritis. These various parts may be infected by the direct transference of the infecting saliva, but the germ is also held to be transmitted through the blood to implicate distant organs.
Appetite is gradually lost, a blackish, fœtid diarrhœa, sets in and the calf is sunk in a profound prostration and debility due partly to the enforced abstinence and colliquative diarrhœa, but much more to the absorption of toxic matters. Death may ensue from the sixth to the twelfth day. In case of recovery a month may be requisite for the completion of convalescence.
Diagnosis. This has to be distinguished especially from aphthous fever by the absence of the large, and clearly defined vesicles of that disease, by the fact that the mammary region and interdigital spaces usually escape, and especially by the immunity of the dam and of other more mature animals. From actinomycosis of the tongue it is diagnosed by its more rapid progress, by the marked constitutional depression, and prostration, and by the absence of the marked induration of the actinomycotic organ (holzzunge) and by the sulphur yellow pin head-like nodules of actinomyces. Tuberculosis is rare in the first weeks after birth in calves, and never makes the rapid progress nor causes the profound depression of this disorder.
Prevention. The first object must be to destroy the infection, and the second to obviate the susceptibility of the young animal. The clearing away of all accumulations of litter, filth, and even fodder from the stable proper, including the stalls where the dams lie, should be followed by a thorough whitewashing or disinfection, with sulphate of copper or of iron, or even mercuric chloride, (1:500.) If the disease has already appeared in a stable the calves should be penned singly to avoid the possibility of infection through sucking each others navels. In all cases an antiseptic (tannin, carbolic acid) should be applied to the navel of the new born. The food of the dam and nurse should be nutritive and free from any suspicion of mustiness or decomposition, and when possible the calf should be allowed to draw its own milk from the teat. When this cannot be allowed, artificial feeding should be surrounded by all the safeguards, named under acute indigestion of calves.
Treatment. Cadeac strongly recommends ½ oz. common salt daily with the food, or alcohol ¾ oz., or a strong infusion of coffee mixed with the milk. Lenglen advises quinoa in the form of tincture, ½ to 1 oz. McGillivray sulphate of soda. Tincture of chloride of iron 30 drops in an ounce of water with each meal would be an excellent resort.
Locally antiseptics are our main reliance. Naphthol, naphthalin, salicylic acid, or salicylate of soda, may be applied directly to the diseased mucous membrane. Tincture of chloride of iron in water (1:2) is one of the best agents (James). Carbolic acid 1 drachm in 6 oz. water, and 1 oz. alcohol has been used safely and with excellent results (Lenglen). Like most other antiseptics, however, this latter must be used with caution as regards the amount. No actively poisonous antiseptic is admissible. The antiseptic should be swabbed over the whole interior of the mouth after each meal.
In case of deep gangrenous masses excision and antiseptics are demanded.