Treatment. Mild cases may respond to a purely dietetic treatment. Boiled milk, hot soup, or well cooked mush, and biscuit, are indicated, and with ½ oz. castor oil and 5 to 10 drops laudanum may suffice for treatment.
In the more severe cases, with some icterus, calomel 1 to 2 grs. with the oil, or with manna 5 drs. may be followed by emollient or soapy injections, and a warm bath or fomentations, the body being afterward carefully dried and warmly covered. This may be followed by a mustard poultice.
The usual antiseptics (salol 10 grs., naphthol 20 grs., creoline 20 drops, creosote 7 drops, or naphthaline 20 grs.) may be given with the laxative and should be given by both mouth and anus several times daily, in combination with nitrate of bismuth. In case of icterus give a mixture of calomel 5 grs., chalk 60 grs., in doses of three to five grains three or four times a day. Or salicylate of soda (10 grs.) may be given at the same intervals.
Quinia sulphate 5 grs., nux vomica 1 gr., tannic acid 1 gr., or silver nitrate ½ to 1 gr., or iron chloride 3 to 5 grs., may be employed when the bowels are much relaxed. Injections of well boiled rice or starch, or of gum or slippery elm, may be employed as adjuvants.
HEMORRHAGIC GASTRO-ENTERITIS OF THE DOG.
Definition. Causes: Spring, toxins, irritants, inflammation. Symptoms: Vomiting, diarrhœa, pendent head, arched back, retracted belly, black, bloody glairy frothing fæces, circulation excited, mucosæ red, yellow, or brown, death in two or three days. Diagnosis. Lesions: Stomach and intestines empty, mucosa of a dark blood red, thickened, liver and kidneys congested. Treatment: Little successful, intestinal disinfection, elimination, laxatives, wet compresses, enemata, heart stimulants, ergot, iron chloride.
Definition. A special form of septic enteritis, occurring as an epizootic and not transmissible by ingestion.
Causes. These are not well known. Occurring in a few dogs at one time in the same place, and time (by preference in spring) and then disappearing for months, and not being appreciably communicable by contagion or ingestion, it has the aspect of being caused by poisons, probably of the nature of toxins taken in with the food or water. Preëxisting inflammation has been alleged as a predisposing cause, the attack having followed superpurgation, or the administration of a handful of salt. Guinard found that the intravenous injection of tuberculin, mallein and other products of microbian growth produced lesions analogous to those of this disease.
Symptoms. The attack is usually sudden. The dog is seized with vomiting and diarrhœa and stands with head depressed, back arched and belly tucked up. The vomit is at first of alimentary matters, then of glairy mucus, or black and bloodstained material. The fæces are black, bloody, glairy, frothy, and abundant, fouling the tail and the hips. The abdomen is at first tense and extremely tender. The pulse is accelerated, the heart beats tumultuous, the breathing slow and temperature elevated. Redness of the visible mucosæ, often tinged more or less deeply with yellow, implies hepatic disorder or destruction of blood globules. Death may occur in two or three days.
The abruptness and violence of the attack, the violent vomiting and purging and the staining of the discharges with blood are to a large extent diagnostic.