Therapeutic treatment comprises—firstly, stimulant applications to the abdomen; secondly, disinfection of the intestine by the administration of salol, benzo-naphthol, very diluted solutions of creolin, etc.; thirdly, intestinal irrigation by the administration of mucilaginous drinks containing bicarbonate of soda, supplemented by general tonic treatment and the supply of concentrated, very nourishing, and easily digested food (Degoix, Revue générale de Médecine Vétérinaire, No. 28, February 15th, 1904, p. 177).
McFadyean describes a similar disease to the above in two to three months old lambs (Jour. of Comp. Path. and Therap., March, 1896, p. 31). The mortality reached 10 per cent. The lambs at the time the disease broke out in the flock were closely folded together with the ewes on growing roots, which, needless to say, were much soiled with earth and fæces before they were completely consumed.
INTESTINAL HELMINTHIASIS IN RUMINANTS
(Ox, Sheep, Goat).
Fig. 117.—Head of Tænia alba of the ox and sheep. (After Neumann.)
Verminous disease of the intestine is often accompanied by similar disease of the stomach (gastro-intestinal strongylosis of the sheep, lumbricosis of the calf), but it also occurs apart from the presence of gastric parasites. Parasites are more frequent in the intestine than in the abomasum, because the alkaline intestinal juices prove a much more favourable medium for their development than do the acid juices of the stomach.
The actual parasites may include ascarides, strongyles, hooked worms, œsophagostomes, tricocephales, sclerostomes, and various tæniæ (Tænia expansa et alba). Many of these have already been, or will hereafter be, referred to.
Helminthiasis due to round worms like strongyles, and the various forms of hooked worm, is graver than that due to flat worms, but most extraordinarily varied collections are sometimes met with. Speaking generally, however, helminthiasis more particularly affects young animals like calves, lambs, and yearling sheep, is rarer in adults, and in all cases the complications it produces are of trifling importance in adults as compared with those caused in the young.
The persistence of verminous diseases in certain infested countries, districts, farms, or pastures is explained by the enormous number of eggs or embryos passed with the fæces and disseminated with manure, as well as by the high degree of resistance of the eggs and embryos to destructive influences.