If the bowels are already acting freely, ½ drachm each of boracic acid and nitrate of bismuth may be given at least thrice daily, with the addition of 60 drops of laudanum, and antiseptics (salol, naphthol, naphthaline). Carminatives like chamomile, anise, cardamons, peppermint may be added, and bitters such as quinia or nux vomica.
Well boiled gruels of barley, oats, linseed, or rye should be given and little or no solid food until appetite and digestion have been restored.
CATARRHAL ENTERITIS IN SWINE.
Causes: decomposing swill, ferments from snout and feet in swill, toxins, salt, brine, powdered soaps, etc. Symptoms: dullness, inappetence, fever, burrowing under litter, stiffness, drooping head, ears and tail, arched back, tender abdomen, constipation, diarrhœa, petechiæ, rumbling, tympany, weakness, emaciation, paraplegia, not actively infectious. Duration: one to eight days or more. Lesions: mucopurulent exudation in alimentary canal, congestion, extravasation, hemorrhages, ulcerations, congestion of peritoneum, mesenteric glands and other organs. Diagnosis: presence of alimentary causes, many attacked at once, no spread to better kept herds, no germ fatal to guinea-pigs nor rabbits. Treatment: eliminate, oil, calomel, flaxseed, gruels, enemata, antiseptics, revulsives, diet during convalescence, antidotes.
Causes. The enteritis of swine has been long considered as infective or septic, yet this is perhaps mainly due to the nature of the food too often furnished to this animal in a state of domestication. Not only is he fed on swill containing all kinds of over-kept food, in a state of more or less advanced decomposition, but he is kept in a pen or yard which soon becomes offensive, and following his natural instincts he roots around with his nose in the accumulating filth. When fed he plunges this foul snout in his liquid food, and as if this were not enough the fore feet follow, and if the trough is long enough the hind feet as well. Every available saprophytic microbe therefore finds its way down his throat, and the toxins from their growth outside the body accompany them to irritate or benumb the mucosa and fit it for the attacks of bacteria, which would otherwise have proved harmless. But in addition to all this, chemical irritants get into the swill and pave the way for the microbes. Salt, brine, and the various caustic washing powders used in washing dishes and tables find their way into the swill barrel often in quantity sufficient to irritate and poison. In experiments conducted at the N. Y. State Veterinary College the washing powders have been proved to be most deadly, and upon different farms, a mortality attributed to hog cholera, has again and again been arrested by preventing the entry of these powders into the swill barrel.
Symptoms. There is dullness, inappetence, hyperthermia (105°), a tendency to lie under the litter, leaving the herd, when raised the pig arches his back, moves stiffly with grunting, the tail and ears pendent, and the belly tender to the touch. The bowels are at first constipated, and thirst ardent, later diarrhœa may set in, and the skin and snout may have red blotches or patches as in hog cholera. Tympanies and abdominal rumblings are frequent. The animal becomes very dull, weak, emaciated, staggers in walking or is completely paraplegic.
It may end fatally in twenty-four or forty-eight hours, or death may be deferred for six or eight days or the disease may merge into the chronic form, or recover. The usual foul surroundings of the pig and the abundance of microbes and toxins taken in, serve to make enteritis in this animal much more redoubtable than in other domestic animals.
The lesions are usually common to stomach and intestine, and consist in abundant mucopurulent discharge, extensive congestion, points and extensive patches of blood extravasation, and of lymph infiltration, ulcers, congested peritoneum and mesenteric glands, and congestions and ecchymosis in distant organs.
The diagnosis between this affection and hog cholera on the one hand and swine plague on the other is not always easy, but it occurs in herds where no introduction of infection can be shown, there is always the evidence of a foul or unwholesome food, drink or environment, and the history of a number having been attacked at once and not one by one at varying intervals, as in infection, the disease does not spread to neighboring herds kept in better conditions, and there is an absence of the specific germ of hog cholera, motile, ærobic, non-liquefying, asporogenous, gas producing with glucose and fatal to guinea-pigs; or of that of swine plague, non-motile, ærobic, non-liquefying, asporogenous, not gas producing and not fatal to guinea-pigs, but fatal to rabbits.
Treatment. If the bowels are costive give castor oil 2 ounces, with great care to avoid choking, or shake 15 to 30 grains of calomel on the tongue and give flaxseed tea, or solution of slippery elm or gum which the animal will usually drink to slake its thirst. Or well boiled gruels may be substituted. Injections of soapsuds or Glauber salts with salicylate of soda should be added until the bowels respond, after which the salicylate alone may be given by both mouth and anus, or it may be replaced by one of the other non-poisonous antiseptics. Oil of turpentine alone or with ammonia may be applied on the abdomen and covered up until the skin is red and angry.