Causes; a symptom of other diseases, of the mouth, teeth, throat or stomach; rank aqueous vegetation, lobelia, pilocarpin, muscaria, tobacco, mustard, and other acrid vegetables; caustic alkalies, acids, salts; compounds of mercury, gold, copper, iodine; palsy of lips; harsh bit; fungi on clover, sainfoin, etc. Symptoms; salivary escape; frequent deglutition; thirst; disordered digestion, etc. Treatment; remove cause; astringent washes; sedatives; embrocations to the glands.
This is often a symptom of some other affection such as aphthous fever, dumb rabies, epilepsy, stomatitis, pharyngitis, dentition, caries and other diseases of the teeth, wounds and ulcers of the mouth, gastric catarrh, etc. In other cases it is due to direct irritants in the food or medicine, as very rank, aqueous, rapidly grown, spring grass, lobelia, pilocarpin, muscarin, tobacco, wild mustard, colchicum, pepper, garlic, ginger, irritant and caustic alkalies, acids and salts, and the compounds of mercury, gold, copper, or iodine employed locally or internally. The application of mercurials to the skin is especially liable to salivate cattle and dogs, partly because of a special susceptibility to the action of this metal and partly from the tendency of these animals to lick the medicated surface. Paralysis of the lips causes a great flow of saliva from the mouth though no more than the normal amount is secreted. The irritation of a large or harsh bit will increase the secretion and still more the former habit of attaching to it small bags of spicy or irritant chemicals. Certain fungi determine salivation. Mathieu saw profuse salivation in horses, cattle and sheep fed on clover and sainfoin which had become brown.
Symptoms consist in the profuse flow of saliva, either in long stringy filaments, or if there is much movement of the jaws, in frothy masses; frequent deglutition; increased thirst and disordered digestion (tympany, inappetence, colics, constipation, diarrhœa). In mercurial salivation there may be loose teeth, swollen, spongy, ulcerated gums, tympany, rumbling, and the passage of fœtid flatus and soft ill-digested stools.
Treatment consists in removing the cause, whether this is to be found in faulty food or drink, diseased teeth or gums, disordered stomach, or the irritant food medicine or poison ingested. If more is wanted simple astringent washes like those recommended for stomatitis and a free access to pure water will often suffice. Tartar emetic or opium has been known to succeed in obstinate cases. Friction over the parotid or submaxillary gland with camphorated spirit, tincture of iodine or soap liniment is sometimes required. In mercurial salivation chlorate of potash is especially to be commended, and when the bowels have been unloaded of the agent, iodide of potassium will hasten its elimination from the tissues and blood.
DILATED SALIVARY DUCTS. SALIVARY CALCULUS. SALIVARY FISTULA.
These are all surgical diseases and are to a large extent inter dependent. The impaction of the calculus in the duct leads to overdistension of the duct posterior to the obstruction, and the rupture or incision of the distended duct, determines the fistula. It is only necessary here to point out the seat of these lesions: the distended sublingual ducts constituting a more or less rounded swelling to one side of the frænum lingui, the Whartonian duct forming a tense rounded cord from the papilla back of the lower incisor teeth backward on the inner side of the lower jaw, and the Stenonian duct forming a similar tense cord from near the middle of the cheek down around the lower border of the jaw in company with the submaxillary artery and backward on the inner side of its curved border to the parotid gland.
For the more precise lesions, symptoms and treatment of these, see a work on surgery.
INFLAMMATION OF THE PAROTID GLAND. PAROTITIS.
Causes: traumatic; calculus; grains; barley and other beards; infecting microbes. Symptoms: fever, dullness, buccal heat, salivation, difficult mastication, swelling of gland and duct, protruded nose, stiff neck, fœtor, dyspnœa, facial paralysis, induration of gland, abcess. Diagnosis from pharyngitis, abcess of guttural pouch or pharyngeal glands; from tumors. Treatment: avoidance of causes; derivation; astringent, antiseptic washes; wet antiseptic bandages to throat; cool pultaceous diet. Open abscess and disinfect. For induration deobstruents. For sloughing antiseptics.
This may be caused by traumatism, such as incised punctured or bruised wounds. Wounds inflicted by the goad, by horns, and even by the yoke in cattle must be looked on as factors. It occurs from obstruction of the salivary ducts by calculi, or by grains, seeds, or pebbles introduced from the mouth; from their irritation by the beards of barley and other plants (brome, rye, wheat, etc.); and from the localization in the gland of specific inflammations like strangles, pyæmia, canine distemper, tuberculosis and pharyngitis. In most of these cases infective microbes are prominent factors. They enter with penetrating bodies from the skin; they extend through the weakened and debilitated tissues in bruises; they penetrate the Stenonian duct with the various foreign bodies from the mouth; irrespective of foreign objects they make their way up the duct by continuous growth from the buccal orifice; in case of calculus or other obstruction their extension is favored by the local congestion and debility and by the stagnation of the saliva above the point of arrest. When present these microbes even favor the deposition of the salivary salts and formation and increase of calculi so that the affection may advance in a vicious circle, the microbes favoring calculus and the calculus favoring the increase of microbes.