The diagnosis presents no difficulty. Puncture or incision reveals the fact that the abscesses are filled with white sebaceous material and are quite free from parasites.
The prognosis is not grave. Recovery occurs spontaneously in a few weeks.
Treatment. Liquid emollient applications and the opening of the small follicular abscesses appear to represent the only means of hastening recovery.
FAGOPYRISM (BUCKWHEAT POISONING).
Fagopyrism is a disease of toxic origin in sheep, and is due to eating buckwheat (Polygonum fagopyrum).
The disease has also been entitled erysipelatous or gangrenous dermatitis, according to its form and gravity.
Causation. The cause is extremely simple, viz., the consumption of buckwheat and other food pertaining to a like species, such as Polygonum persicaria. The green plant and the straw give the same results, but the action of light and air are also necessary for the production of the disease, a fact which is somewhat difficult to explain.
According to German writers the disease occurs more frequently in white sheep and lambs than in those in which the skin is of a very dark colour.
Symptoms. When the sheep are fed in folds, with the green plant in summer or with the straw in winter, nothing unusual is seen, the herds being, to all appearance, in perfect health. On their being set at liberty, however, the first symptoms appear, perhaps in less than an hour. Some animals become restless, make peculiar movements of the head, and soon display intense congestion of the parts free of wool, together with redness and swelling of the ears, eyelids, face, throat, etc. The condition develops with extreme rapidity, the animals being immediately afflicted with pruritus over the affected regions. If they are not removed to the quiet and warmth of the fold the symptoms increase and papules appear, which may be transformed into vesicles and bullæ. In the fold, on the other hand, all the symptoms rapidly disappear.
The disease rarely assumes an erysipelatous form, but respiratory and cerebral symptoms, together with fever and vertigo, are not exceptional.