Functional disturbance of the genito-urinary apparatus is rarer, or at least more difficult to detect. The animals refuse drink; micturition seems to be suspended or very difficult. The urine may be albuminous or rose-coloured, in consequence of the presence of hæmatin; more rarely it is purulent or sanguinolent. There may also be urethritis, cystitis, pyelitis, and nephritis, with the passage of hyalin cylinders in the urine, although this is not always the case.
In females the mucous membrane of the vagina and lips of the vulva usually seem congested and œdematous; but it is rare to find diphtheritic false membranes, as on the buccal and nasal mucous membranes, etc. On the other hand, vaginitis and exudative metritis are common.
Cutaneous outbreaks also constitute important symptoms by which this disease is recognised. At points where the skin is fine, on the inner surface of the thighs, around the girth, on the inner surface of the forearm, and on the mammæ, etc., an exanthematous eruption occurs, followed later by the development of pustules, which at first sight might suggest cow-pox.
These pustules are prominently apparent, and can readily be detected on palpation. They are more or less confluent, hard, and without a peripheral œdematous zone.
In the case of the mammæ these pustules occur most commonly on the teats, are round or slightly oval in form, bright red in colour, and sometimes violet-red. They never become converted into vesico-pustules, as in cow-pox, or into vesicles; and in no way resemble the skin eruption peculiar to foot-and-mouth disease.
Certain nervous symptoms have also been described, comprising trembling, epileptiform convulsions, and paraplegia of the hind quarters.
Moussu has never seen nervous disturbance assume the form of epileptiform convulsions, and it is possible that the paraplegia referred to simply marks the last stage of the disease.
Causation. The essential cause of gangrenous coryza has not yet been definitely ascertained. Within recent years teachers of the highest authority have represented the disease as a general affection belonging to the hæmorrhagic forms of septicæmia (Nocard and Leclainche). Nocard has found ovoid bacteria in the false membranes of the larynx, and Leclainche a paracoli-bacillus in the mesenteric ganglia and the intestines, but the disease has never been reproduced in a characteristic and complete form similar to the clinical type.
Other microbes have also been described as occurring in the blood or discharges; but attempts to transmit the disease by using cultures or the different morbid products which observers have collected have invariably failed, and it has therefore been concluded that the disease is not contagious, but merely infectious.
Moussu does not regard this disease as a hæmorrhagic septicæmia, because the blood proves sterile unless grave pulmonary, intestinal or renal complications occur, and because the disease appears capable of being cured in a short time by simple methods. In the present state of knowledge he prefers to regard it as an infectious disease of diphtheritic form, at first localised in the upper respiratory and digestive tracts, always tending towards a grave toxæmia, and towards complications due to various other infections.