Treatment.—Clip the hair around the sore places and soften scabs by applying oil or glycerine containing 5% of creolin or lysol. Then apply a thick lather of green soap and leave on over night. These applications are to soften and remove the scabs and prepare the skin for the real remedy. Of these there are many; sulphur ointment (equal parts flowers of sulphur and lard) is an old standby or you can use a 3% solution of creolin or lysol. This should be thoroughly rubbed into the skin by a brush and kept on for a week reapplying as it becomes rubbed off. Then wash off and reapply for another week. The reason for the second application is that while the first will kill off all the animals, there may be some eggs that are not killed and if only one application is made after it has been removed, the eggs may hatch out and the Mange come back.
Hidebound
This condition, in which the skin seems firm, hard and bound to the parts beneath, is due to some morbid condition of the system rather than to a disease of the skin itself. There is most frequently some derangement of the stomach, or some old standing organic disease. Remove these, and the disease disappears, and the hide becomes soft and loose.
Treatment.—Giving twenty drops of J.K., morning and night, will generally remove the difficulty.
If it fails after a fair trial, give the J.K., each night, and twenty drops of I.I., each morning.
Anthrax
Anthrax is a very contagious disease from which comes a well known germ, the bacillus anthracis, and which attacks almost all animals and man. The germ lives in the animal’s body and also in rich moist soils, and is very difficult to eradicate. The germ enters the body by the mouth, in food or water, or through cuts in the skin.
Symptoms.—There is sudden high fever (105 to 107) the pulse is very frequent (80 to a 100 or more) small and scarcely perceptible. The mucous membrane of the head becomes very red, the eyes red, swollen and filled with tears. The temperature of the body is unequally distributed, some parts hot, others cold. The animal does not eat or chew the cud. There is great depression, weakness, stupor and loss of sensation. There is trembling over the body, particularly in the hind quarters, which may even “give way”. Sometimes instead of stupor, there are attacks of fury, where the animal will bellow and dash itself against any object it may see.
There may or may not be carbuncles, these are small swellings about the size of a walnut, which may appear on the head, chest, abdomen, etc., they are blue-black or dark red in color and are not usually painful.
One of the most remarkable things about anthrax is its rapid course, most animals die in from 12 to 48 hours. After death the bodies do not get stiff and decay very rapidly.