POISONING WITH COTTON SEED OR COTTON SEED MEAL.
Poisons in cotton plant: on man, pig, cow, stock cattle. Symptoms in latter: Nervousness, debility, exhaustion, in-cöordination, paresis, dyspnœa, dullness, anorexia, drooping head, trembling, lachrymation, corneal ulcer, opacity, vesiculation; unilateral or bilateral; with rest and change of food recover in five days except eye lesions. Treatment: suspend cotton seed, purge, and treat eye lesions.
The cotton plant develops poisons for various genera of animals. The bark of the root is a favorite abortifacient for woman and may be used for the same purpose in the domestic animals. The seed when fed continuously to swine will destroy life with symptoms of scorbutus, and grave constitutional disorders. Cotton seed meal fed in excess to dairy cows has a bad reputation for inducing garget and mammitis. In stock cattle it has the reputation of producing diarrhœa, running from the eyes, abscess and ulceration of the cornea, staphyloma, hyperthermia (103° to 109° F.), swelled legs, congestion of the liver and spleen, and high colored urine. As described by Dr. F. C. McCurdy, of Kansas City, the southern cattle arrive in poor condition, seem nervous, weak and exhausted, move with an uncertain, staggering gait, and may fall and make convulsive but ineffectual efforts to rise. Dyspnœa, blue mucosæ, and protruded tongue are noticeable in such cases. In the slighter cases, dullness, inappetence, suspended rumination, drooping head, and trembling limbs are characteristic features, and profuse lachrymation is constant. In some eyes there is a small opaque spot around a minute ulcer containing small granules like dust or sand, and situated in the centre of the cornea on the line of approximation of the two eyelids. Larger opaque areas when present were generally confined to the corneal surface, without any areola of distended vessels, and without a vascular zone at the junction of cornea and sclera. In certain cases the whole transparent cornea stood out in the form of a vesicle, so prominently as to interfere with closure of the eyelids. The affection might attack both eyes or only one.
An important feature is that cattle coming from the cars in this condition and left at rest for five days on hay without cotton seed recovered rumination and appetite, and the weakness and nervous excitement or depression disappeared. There remained only the lesions of the eye which progress tardily according to their extent or severity.
The southern origin of the cattle, together with the congested liver and spleen and the high colored urine would have suggested the southern cattle fever, but from the promptitude of the recovery under a change of regimen and the prominence of the lesions of the eye.
The important point in connection with this subject is the prophylaxis by avoidance of the too liberal diet of cotton seed. When the disease has actually set in, the true course is to suspend this aliment, clear the bowels of any that may remain therein, and treat the lesions of the eyes according to their respective conditions.