The food should be easy of digestion, and of first-rate quality. The most useful drugs comprise mild, unirritating diuretics, general stimulants, and tonics.
Animals affected with incurable lesions should not be treated.
ASCITES.
True ascites consists in dropsy of the peritoneum, unaccompanied by inflammation of that membrane, or by the presence of infectious microorganisms in the transuded liquid. Properly speaking, it is not a morbid entity, but only a symptom common to several very complex diseases.
Causation. The diseases which produce it may be set forth under five principal heads:—
(1.) Cardiac affections in general, particularly chronic lesions of the heart, interfering with venous circulation, and causing prolonged stasis of blood in an organ or tissue.
(2.) Pericarditis due to foreign bodies, and the various forms of pseudo-pericarditis, i.e., lesions in the neighbourhood of the heart, causing compression of that organ and of its vessels.
(3.) Generally speaking, all lesions which interfere with the return circulation, particularly lesions of the liver (distomatosis, echinococcosis, and interstitial hepatitis). These produce compression of the portal vein or other obstacle to circulation, and the transudation is exclusively localised in the abdominal cavity. The connective tissue does not become infiltrated.
(4.) Diseases of the kidneys (nephritis, pyelo-nephritis), which secondarily produce cardiac disturbance.
(5.) Gestation, which causes compression of certain digestive viscera, and of certain veins of the pelvic cavity.