A course of bitters, with bicarbonate of soda in small doses, may be demanded to re-establish the healthy tone of the stomach and intestines, and a run at pasture, or at least an open air life, exercise, and a laxative diet with abundance of good water should be secured. Any undue costiveness should be counteracted at once by a saline laxative.
CATARRHAL ICTERUS (JAUNDICE) IN DOGS.
Pampered artificial life of dogs as predisposition. Eating carrion. Chills especially when heated and exhausted. Infection from bowels. Obstruction of gall duct by inflammation, calculi, neoplasms. Catarrhal exudate as a protector of microbes. Toxins from intestines, food or water. Youth, lack of acclimation, mental shock, blocking of bowel, blood effusion in gall bladder, incubation. Symptoms: signs of gastro-enteritis, prostration with invasion of the liver and especially of the kidney. Icteric urine without jaundiced mucosa. Gravity of icterus with suppression of urine. Hypochondriac tenderness, arched back, dullness, irregular bowels, excited circulation and breathing, preliminary fever tends to subside, tympany, colic, trembling. Death in one or two days or more. Lesions: congestion, degeneration, ecchymosis, ulceration of gastro-duodenal mucosa, extending into liver ducts and acini, bile inspissated, liver enlarged, yellowish brown, softened, fatty, shrunken, distorted hepatic cells. Kidneys congested, ecchymosed, cortical part with necrotic foci; lymph glands congested. Diagnosis: by icterus of tissues and urine tests. Prognosis: grave in acute cases, more hopeful in tardy ones. Treatment: antiseptics, cholagogues, salol, salicylates, alkalies, carbonates, tartrates, iodides, laxatives, cold enemata, aloes, electricity, water freely, pilocarpin, strychnia, aqua regia, digitalis, bitters, muriatic acid, convalescent diet.
Causes. The dog is much more subject to jaundice than the horse, and the affection is liable to be much more severe, than in solipeds. He leads a more artificial life, especially in cities, where the lack of open air exercise, and of the facility for attending to nature’s wants, together with an excessive, varied, stimulating diet predisposes him to constipation, indigestion, and disorders of the stomach, bowels and liver. In other cases the devouring of decomposing food and foul water proves a cause of direct microbian infection, and of poisoning by ptomaines and toxins generated out of the body. Exposure manifestly has something to do with the prevalence of canine icterus, which is more common in spring and especially in autumn than at other seasons. In hunting dogs, out of condition, the suddenly induced over-exertion and fatigue, and the succeeding chill in cold air or water, become accessory factors.
It appears to be most commonly the result of the transference of germs from the intestine, either by way of the bile ducts, or with the blood through the portal vein. The first form is usually the sequel of muco-enteritis affecting the duodenum, with swelling of the walls of the common bile and pancreatic duct at its orifice, or from obstruction by gall-stones, concretions, impacted bowels or neoplasms. With the arrest of the biliary flow the intestinal ferments gain an entrance into the common duct and the sac of Vater, finding protection from the antiseptic bile in the resulting catarrhal exudate, and in this way they reach the gall-bladder, the biliary radicles and the acini. With the entrance of bacteria or toxins by the portal vein on the other hand, there is first a troubled condition of the acini and hepatic cells, an over-secretion of thick bile, and blocking of the passages so that little is passed into the intestine, the greater part being absorbed into the hepatic veins. Fermentation microbes in the stomach and intestines, the germs of suppuration and septicæmia, and saprophytic germs from outside the body are held to be causative of icterus. Cadeac lays much stress on the putrefactive germs in water, and traces different attacks to marshes and foul ponds.
As in other infecting diseases, early age has a predisposing influence. The older subject has presumably been already exposed to the microbe and acquired some measure of immunity. Animals coming new to the locality and poison, are equally susceptible with the young. Trasbot found that 14 out of 17 dogs thus attacked were between three and eighteen months.
Leblanc and Trasbot claim mental shock as a cause of icterus in the dog. The disappointment and weariness caused by the master’s absence, the excitement of a fiercely contested fight, and brutal punishment are adduced as cases in point. Abuse of emetics and purgatives, in connection with a pre-existing hepatic or duodenal disorder or as a supposed prophylactic of canine distemper has induced jaundice.
Obstruction of the small intestine has proved a factor, partly by the reflex irritation through the splanchnic nerves, and partly through obstruction to the common bile and pancreatic duct.
Walley records a case of obstruction of the cystic duct by extravasation of blood in the gall bladder.
Icterus not infrequently supervenes during canine distemper in which the early gastric and duodenal irritation becomes an occasion of the extension of the catarrhal infection to the common bile duct. Even apart from this Trasbot has seen the majority of cases ushered in by a gastro-duodenitis. In this connection it is interesting to quote the remark of Pfuhl that 26 out of 27 persons using the foul baths of a given establishment contracted icterus, while the soldiers bathing in another branch of the Elbe entirely escaped.