The symptoms may develop fully in from six to twelve hours; sometimes the skin is covered with slightly prominent reddish patches, varying in size from ⅓ of an inch to 1¼ inches in diameter.
The patches may also become confluent and form large, irregular red or violet flattened swellings, sensitive to the touch and spread over the upper and lateral portions of the body. Only in exceptional cases is there any oozing of blood.
In favourable cases recovery takes place in forty-eight hours, and even in grave cases in from five to six days.
Diagnosis. It is sometimes very difficult to distinguish this condition from swine erysipelas, particularly in the first few cases, although the congested or hæmorrhagic patches occupy different positions.
The prognosis is usually favourable.
Treatment. The disease being unquestionably of digestive origin, the animals should be kept without food and receive repeated doses of mild purgatives according to their age and condition, sulphate of soda, 4 to 12 drachms, or calomel, 1½ to ·8 grains. Recovery is rapid.
SCLERODERMA.
This term is applied to a disease characterised by thickening and hardening of the skin. Up to now it has been described only in the pig, and principally in male animals or old animals of either sex.
The symptoms are difficult to detect, and in many cases are only discovered after slaughter. Without any change in external appearance, the skin becomes thick, hard and sclerosed over limited or extensive areas, and is thus transformed into hard, rigid, inextensible and inelastic plates, sometimes as much as 1 to 2 inches in thickness. The change usually commences about the dorsal region, and extends irregularly towards the chest and sometimes towards the limbs.
The patient thus becomes imprisoned in a kind of cuirass, which interferes with its movements and causes unaccountable stiffness. Palpation of the skin gives the impression of a piece of wood, for it is hard and resistant over the affected regions, whilst over the belly, inner surface of the thighs, and region of the elbow, it retains its usual pliability.