The symptoms are fever, rapid pulse, depression and weakness with sometimes chills.
Treatment.—In all cases of Fever, the A.A., is the first and generally the only remedy required. Give fifteen drops at intervals of two or three hours, at first, and by degrees at longer intervals as the animal improves.
Glanders and Farcy
The disease is termed Glanders when it is principally confined to the head and nose, and called Farcy when manifesting itself in the lymphatics.
Symptoms of Glanders.—Constant discharge from one or both nostrils, more frequently from one, and that the left; the discharge is at first thin and watery, afterward thick like the white of egg. It may continue in this way for some time, or it soon becomes more mattery, sticky, then greenish or yellowish, or mixed with streaks of blood, and having a bad smell. Soon after this discharge is noticed, the glands under the jaw become painful and swollen, and one of them appears fixed to the jaw-bone. Then the membrane lining the inside of the nose has a yellowish or leaden color, which is considered characteristic of the disease; small bladders are noticed upon it, which afterward are changed to ulcers; these have sharp borders, and spread and deepen until the gristle and bones beneath become ulcerated. When ulcers appear upon the membrane of the nose, the constitution of the horse is evidently involved; he loses flesh; his belly is tucked up; coat unthrifty and the hair readily comes off; the appetite impaired; the strength fails; cough, more or less urgent, may be heard; the lungs become filled with abscesses, wasting goes on, and the animal soon dies.
Farcy.—Upon the face, lips and other portions of the body, but especially upon the legs, hard, painful and hot lumps are felt, which are called Farcy buds; they increase in size, with pain and heat, until the ulceration works through the skin and a thin discharge flows out. Between these lumps along the course of the lymphatics, hardened cords are felt; the groin, inside the thighs, and space between the fore legs and chest, become, from the tumefaction of these lymphatics, swelled and very painful; the legs are swelled, together with the usual discharge of glanders.
Treatment.—In suspected cases were the disease is not well developed or recognized give fifteen drops of the C.C., every two hours.
N. B.—It should be remembered that a well marked case of glanders is highly contagious. Not only may the disease be communicated to other animals, but the glandered matter coming in contact with a cut, abraded or sore surface in the human subject, will be liable to result as a very severe, if not fatal, case of poisoning. Prudence demands that we should handle such animals with great caution, and a thoroughly glandered animal had much better be killed at once than endanger other animals or the lives of human beings, and the more so as the chance of recovery in such a case is very remote.
Inflammation of the Lymphatics, or Weed
In some rare cases horses suffer from Inflammation of the Lymphatics, manifested by cord-like swellings along the course of these vessels. It may be brought on by sudden changes of food, cold and wet weather, sudden over-work after several days of rest, disordered stomach, standing in cold water, exposure to drafts of air etc.