The symptoms are those of acute heart disease generally modified somewhat by the precise location of the inflamed spot, and treatment need not differ materially from that applied for inflammation of the investing membranes, inner and outer, and for the infectious disease which it complicates.
CHRONIC VALVULAR DISEASE OF THE HEART.
This, as already noticed, is a common result of endocarditis, the valves being most obnoxious to disease in such cases. The symptoms are those mentioned under endocarditis as characterizing disease of the different valves, such as incapacity for exertion, difficult breathing, palpitation, irregularity or intermission of pulse, venous pulse, abnormal heart sounds, unsteadiness of the limbs when driven, and dropsical swellings in the limbs and elsewhere. The reader is referred to endocarditis for particulars, it being borne in mind that these symptoms are not in this case associated with fever.
Horses affected in this way are useless. Cattle may sometimes be partially fattened by preserving them from all sources of excitement, by keeping the bowels regular and by combating any paroxysms with sedatives, such as aconite, veratrum, hydrocyanic acid, or opium, and with digitalis.
FATTY DEGENERATION OF THE HEART.
Causes, improvement in the direction of easy fattening, inactive life, best breeds of butcher cattle and pigs suffer. Symptoms, weak, irregular, intermittent pulse, palpitation, unfitness for exertion, general heart symptoms.
In addition to the fibrous and bony transformations to which the substance of the heart’s walls is subject, a fatty metamorphosis is frequently met with. In most cases the fat accumulates in great masses externally, but in others the muscular tissue has to a greater or less extent lost its natural structure and fatty granules have taken the place of the sarcous elements. In overfed oxen the right cavities of the heart rarely escape dilatation, and this condition is very often accompanied by the fatty change. Virchow has shown that highbred English pigs imported into Germany are subject to a similar affection of the heart and of the entire muscular system. It may occur during wasting diseases and from phosphorous poisoning.
The symptoms are weak, irregular and intermitting pulse, palpitation on excitement, weakness of the heart’s impulse in the intervals, incapacity for exertion, sighing, Cheyne-Stokes respiration, loss of control over the limbs when hurriedly driven and tendency to dropsy. It is often associated with dilatation, is rarely distinguishable from it in life, and is equally beyond remedial measures. The feeding animals most commonly affected can usually be fattened if removed from all sources of excitement. In case of phosphorous poisoning improvement takes place when the poison is stopped.
NEW FORMATIONS IN THE HEART. TUMORS. PARASITES.
Glanders, abscess, melanosis, tubercle, polypus, nœvus, parasites—echinococcus, cysticercus tenuicollis, cysticercus cellulosa, trichina, sarcocyst, filaria immitis, strongylus subulatus, strongylus vasorum.