Diagnosis. This is somewhat difficult, for the parts rapidly become very sensitive, and the animals violently resist examination. When the foreign body penetrates the anterior chamber or the lens, it produces suppuration or traumatic cataract.
Before anything can be done it is often necessary to render the parts anæsthetic by instilling a few drops of cocaine solution into the eye.
The foreign body may then be discovered by close observation. If the pain is very intense, and great resistance is offered to opening the eye, the practitioner may confine himself to passing a soft camel-hair brush saturated with cocaine solution over the surface of the eye and into the conjunctival sacs. The brush loosens, and often removes, the offending body. In the absence of a camel-hair brush, the little finger, covered with a piece of fine linen, may be used.
Where the parts cannot be touched owing to the resistance of the animal, lukewarm solutions of antiseptics such as boric acid may be occasionally injected into the eye by means of a syringe, but care must be taken to prevent the animal injuring itself against the syringe by sudden movements.
CONJUNCTIVITIS AND KERATITIS.
Inflammation of the conjunctiva and inflammation of the cornea almost always occur together, and reciprocally induce one another when of a certain degree of intensity. They may be simple, that is to say, produced by simple causes, or they may be specific, and of a contagious character.
Simple inflammation is caused by the action of cold, draughts, dust, or mechanical injuries. Specific inflammations, the nature of which is still little understood, occur in the ox and goat. They are very contagious, and may successively attack all the animals of a herd.
The symptoms of acute and specific inflammation differ very little. They comprise congestion, lachrymation, chemosis, a certain amount of suppuration, and sometimes superficial ulceration of the cornea. The patients suffer very acute pain, avoid the light, present all the symptoms of photophobia, and are affected with spasm of the orbicularis muscle.
In simple cases these symptoms frequently disappear, provided the byres are kept clean and astringent eye-washes are applied.
In contagious keratitis, however, the cornea may suppurate and even become perforated after a few weeks.