The post mortem appearances resemble those of the horse. The surface of the lung beneath the diseased portions of pleura, however, often presents a marbled appearance from the infiltration of the areolar tissue between the adjacent pulmonary lobules. The organization of the false membranes begins on an average about the tenth day.
Treatment. The same general principles must be followed as in the horse. Bleeding can rarely be employed, partly because the disease so often assumes a subacute form, and partly because when first seen considerable effusion has often already taken place and severe depletive measures are thereby contraindicated.
A laxative dose (1 ℔.) of sulphate magnesia, may be given in warm gruel, and the same means by compresses, hot fomentations and counterirritation adopted, and the same sedative and diuretic medicines given as in the horse. In the advanced stages and in the low types of the disease the stimulating diuretics (sweet spirits of nitre, and liquor of the acetate of ammonia) and vegetable and mineral tonics are especially indicated. The diet in these last types must be nutritive, laxative and easily digested.
Tapping of the chest is equally applicable as in the horse, (see Hydrothorax.)
In the chronic forms everything is to be done to support the general health whether by food stimulants or tonics, and counterirritants may be applied several times.
PLEURISY IN SHEEP.
Causes, exposure, after clipping, washing in cold weather, alternations from hot buildings to cold fields, shedding of the wool. Symptoms, hyperthermia, troubled breathing and pulse with catching inspiration, tender intercostals, friction sound, and signs of effusion. Treatment, preventive, shelter, febrifuges in food or water, aqua ammonia to sides.
The causes of pleurisy in sheep may be largely included in the general statement—exposure. Cold washing and exposure after clipping is especially injurious. Devieusart saw 300 cases of pleurisy and thirty deaths in a flock of sheep shorn in February. If kept secluded in warm buildings sheep may be shorn in midwinter, but any reckless exposure, and any sudden reduction of the temperature of the building is liable to be disastrous. Scab and other skin affections which lead to a shedding of the wool in inclement weather may also be the occasion of widespread attacks. Otherwise the causes are essentially those of the same disease in the larger animals.
The symptoms resemble those of pneumonia, but with the peculiar sharp, short arrest of the inspiration, and the marked tenderness of the intercostal spaces as above described. The cough is short, dry, hacking and infrequent or suppressed as much as possible. Auscultation and percussion signs, corresponding to those found in other animals, are easily got in the newly shorn sheep. In the unshorn the wool must be parted and a stethoscope employed.
The treatment is mainly preventive, or when the disease is present, of a general nature applicable to flocks. A warm barn, with pure air, blanketing, wet compresses, to which may be added extract of henbane, and nitrate of potash in the drinking water give examples of general medication. As a derivative, aqua ammonia and oil may be applied in lines on the chest exposed by parting the wool or generally on the shorn. Where the patient can receive the requisite attention further treatment should be on lines laid down for cattle.