TONSILITIS IN PIGS, AND OTHER ANIMALS.
Causes; debilitating, climatic, microbian. Symptoms; fever, dullness; lies under litter; ears and tail droop; watery eyes; anorexia; vomiting; pharyngeal swelling; buccal redness and fœtor; tonsils swollen with pus or caseous mass in follicles; cough dry and hard, later loose. Abscess. Calculus. Course. Treatment; antiseptic electuaries; embrocations; laxatives; diuretics; tonics.
This is seen in both the acute and chronic form. In the former it has the general causes and symptoms of pharyngitis. There is more or less fever, dullness, a disposition to lie with head extended and buried in the litter, ears drooping, eyes watering and red, carelessness of food, deglutition painful, and liable to be followed by vomiting. The mouth is red and hot, the breath fœtid and the tonsils swollen, and their alveoli filled with muco purulent matter or at times with a fœtid cheese-like product. The cough is at first dry and hard and later loose and gurgling.
In the chronic form there is general swelling of the tonsils with the overdistension of the follicles by the above mentioned whitish putty-like masses, which are often even calcareous. These are due to the proliferation of microbes which find in these alveoli a most favorable field for their propagation. A similar condition is found in the carnivora and to a less extent in the horse, in keeping with the restricted development of the amygdalæ in these animals. It may be attended by ulceration, or in rare cases by the formation of veritable calculi in the follicles of the tonsils.
The gravity of the disease is largely determined by the nature of the infecting microbe and the debility and susceptibility of the animal attacked. The affection usually ends in recovery, but may go on to grave local ulceration, and general infection.
Treatment consists largely in astringent and antiseptic applications to the buccal mucous membrane. In the acute forms frequent smearing of the mouth with electuaries of honey or molasses and borax, boric acid, salammoniac, chlorate or permanganate of potash, and the application of stimulating embrocations to the skin around the throat. In other cases solutions of tincture of chloride of iron, or of tincture of iodine can be used with profit. The iron can be swallowed with advantage, but it is objectionable to pour liquid rapidly into the mouth of the pig, because of the danger of its entering the lungs and setting up fatal pneumonia. A better way is to apply it to the interior of the mouth and fauces on a swab or sponge dipped in the liquid. Short of this one of these agents may be mixed with the drinking water, or muriatic acid may be used in the same way, though at some detriment to the teeth. The general health must at all times be attended to. Any costiveness may be corrected by Glauber salts or jalap, and elimination through the kidneys must be sought through the use of nitrate of potash or other diuretic.
CALCULI IN THE TONSILS.
Diagnosis and treatment of tonsillar calculi; spud; acid dressings. Trauma of soft palate by stick, probang, file, molar. Abscess of palate. Treatment; laxative; expectorant; antiseptic; lancing. Cleft palate and hare lip.
Rudimentary as these organs are in the equine race they are important enough to have become the seat of hard calculous masses. These have been found by Goubaux and Blanc in old asses, and by the author in old horses. They vary in size from a pin’s head to a pea and consist of concentric layers of a granular material arranged around a central nucleus, which is usually a foreign body introduced with the food. This nucleus is usually of a vegetable nature, while the enveloping material is made up largely of the imprisoned and degenerated epithelium of the follicle. Both diagnosis and treatment are difficult in such cases. The adventitious masses should be dislodged by the aid of a smooth, blunt metallic spud, and the surface thereafter washed or swabbed with an antiseptic and astringent solution. Swabbing with a solution of hydrochloric acid will tend to dissolve and remove them.