A careful study of the development of the ulcerations will also in most instances make clear the difference between tuberculous stomatitis and simple stomatitis or stomatitis due to actinomycosis. Intestinal tuberculosis and tuberculous enteritis are sufficiently characterised by persistent intractable diarrhœa accompanied by tympanites, by the fœtid character of the fæces, and by moderate but continued fever. Chronic diarrhœa, which alone presents some analogy with this condition, is never accompanied by permanent tympanites.
Tuberculosis of the genital organs in male animals is always liable to be mistaken for simple orchitis and the development of tumours in the testicle; an injection of tuberculin will, however, indicate the nature of the lesion.
When the symptoms of genital disease or chronic mammitis in female animals suggest that the disease is of a specific character, the diagnosis can frequently be confirmed by a microscopical examination of the pus or milk.
Finally, should the practitioner hesitate as to the nature of the lesions which are the cause of arthritis, deformity of bones, cerebral symptoms, etc., tuberculin again will in most cases settle the question.
The prognosis in cases of tuberculosis is extremely unfavourable, whatever the form of the disease or its manifestations. Clinically the disease should be regarded as incurable in the strict sense of the word, however limited may be the lesions. The affected animals are not all doomed to immediate death: some may be kept alive, and may even serve an economic purpose without necessarily endangering others; it is sometimes possible to fatten them, though the risks probably far outweigh the advantages, but one can never rely on recovery in any particular case.
The gravity of this disease is the greater inasmuch as it assumes so many forms, any one of which may result in the infection of other animals.
All those forms of the disease, such as tuberculosis of the respiratory, digestive and genital tracts, in which virulent material containing bacilli is discharged realise these conditions. The patient becomes a source of infection to others of its kind, a fact which more than anything else renders the disease so dangerous to the farmer and breeder.
Only in cases where the lesions are closed (as in tuberculosis of the lymphatic glands, serous membranes, joints, etc.) can the sufferers be regarded as innocuous, and—as these lesions are exceptional or at least, as animals suffering from them are very frequently afflicted with open lesions from which bacilli are continually being discharged—every tuberculous animal must be regarded from a clinical standpoint as a constant danger to its neighbours.
This, however, must not be understood to mean that there are not different degrees of danger. It is quite certain that a patient with pulmonary caverns which are constantly throwing off enormous quantities of material full of bacilli is much more dangerous than another suffering only from slight bronchial or tracheal lesions, though the danger in the latter case is none the less always present.
Treatment. There is no really curative treatment of tuberculosis.