In connection with obstruction microbian infection extends upward into the liver, and in rupture of the bladder an acute, diffuse septic peritonitis follows (Chassaing). This only follows on infective inflammation of the gall bladder. Aseptic bile causes little or no irritation.
Symptoms. As in the horse, general symptoms of ill health or hepatic disorder are not pathognomonic. The presence of intermittent attacks of constipation, and colic, with icterus, tympanies and violent efforts at expulsion are the diagnostic symptoms of an acute attack. Pulsation and respiration are accelerated, and the urine dense, high colored, oily and slightly yellow. Reboul has noticed that symptoms are aggravated on exposure to cold; there are great prostration and dullness, frequent moaning and marked indications of tenderness when the right hypochondrium is percussed. Charlot has observed that the only symptoms may be persistent jaundice with scanty, high colored urine, containing some sediment.
Treatment is essentially the same as in the horse. Vanswieten and Verheyen draw special attention to the fact that whereas biliary calculi are very common in cattle during winter, they are rarely found in animals that have been for even a short period on the spring grass. Spring pasture is therefore the best therapeutic agent. During paroxysms of colic, Glauber salts, or olive oil, antispasmodics and fomentations over the liver are to be tried. In the intervals salicylate of soda, sodium and potassium carbonate, olive oil, chloroform, and ether may be used. Abundance of water and aqueous rations are essential.
GALL STONES IN SHEEP.
Calculi are very rare. One described by Morton had a brownish yellow color on its surface, and a white color spotted with green internally; it had a bitter taste, colored saliva yellow, and melted when heated, diffusing the odor of musk. It weighed twelve grains and contained 70 per cent. of cholesterin, calcic phosphate and carbonate and the usual biliary elements.
But if spherical calculi are rare, concretions and casts of the bile ducts are common, especially in distomatosis. These are of a yellowish, reddish, greenish or blackish brown, and form granular plates, or veritable cylindroid casts often firmly adherent to the mucous membrane of the duct.
In such cases the walls of the encrusted ducts are hypertrophied and stand out on the back of the liver as white bands diverging from the portal fissure.
Apart from the usual symptoms of distomatosis no special indications have been observed.
Treatment is primarily that for distomatosis, to which the general measures advised for calculi may be added.