Treatment.—The earlier stages of this disease, or catarrh, should be treated at once, as directed under that head. Then a dose or two of the remedy for that disease removes all danger.
Remove the animal to a warm but well ventilated stable, and feed on warm mashes and gruel.
Give first, at intervals of two hours, two or three doses of A.A., twenty drops at a dose. This will allay the heat and fever to some extent. Then alternate, at intervals of three hours, the E.E., with the A.A., the same doses, and continue this treatment until restored, only that the medicine need not be given so frequently after improvement has progressed.
Pleurisy
This disease consists of an inflammation of the delicate membrane which lines the chest, and also is reflected over or covers the lungs.
It is caused most frequently by exposure to cold, or from the extension of catarrh. Pleurisy rarely exists alone, but is almost invariably complicated with bronchitis or pneumonia, or both.
Symptoms.—The disease generally begins in the same manner as pneumonia, with dullness, loss of appetite, etc. The cough is attended with pain, and seems to be cut short, as if the animal tried to stop it; the breathing is short, seemingly cut off and evidently painful during the passage of the air into the lungs, and is attended with a grunt during its expiration; the sides are painful when pressed upon; the skin, at the angles of the mouth, is wrinkled; the shoulders and upper part of the chest are in a constant quiver; the head is stretched out; the eyes are unusually bright; the tongue hangs out of the mouth, from which frothy slaver is continually flowing. The animal neither eats nor chews the cud; she gets weaker and thinner every day, and all the symptoms become more and more severe until death ensues, often preceded by excessive purging.
Treatment.—Give at first the A.A., a dose of twenty drops, every two hours, and continue this the first day and night if the case is severe.
Then alternate the E.E., with the A.A., at intervals of two, three or four hours.
Food and Stabling.—In all serious diseases of the air-passages, Bronchitis, Pleurisy, Pneumonia, etc., the animal should be placed in a dry, comfortable stable, not too close, and her food should consist of bran mashes, boiled carrots or turnips, meal-gruel and hay tea. Good old hay may be given sparingly; straw and chaff not at all. When the appetite is returning, great care must be taken not to give too much food at once, for if the stomach is overloaded or crammed, disease is almost sure to return, and the animal to die in consequence. Give but very sparingly of food until the stomach has fully regained its former power of digestion.