Symptoms. The mature animal assumes the recumbent position, refusing to rise, and dies in a few hours. In calves, life may be prolonged for a few hours longer, and there have been noticed, anorexia, watering of the eyes, accelerated pulse and respiration, arrest of intestinal peristalsis, cold ears, rigid limbs, and moderately full belly (Notz). There should also be tenderness on manipulation or percussion of the left hypochondrium, and until coagulation occurs, fluctuation in the lower part of the abdomen, with pallid mucous membranes and other signs of profuse internal hæmorrhage.
Treatment is useless in the majority of cases. In the slighter forms it would be the same as in the horse.
TUMORS OF THE SPLEEN.
Secondary. Delay of blood favors. Sarcoma: horse, cattle, dog. Carcinoma: horse, dog. Melanoma: common and large in gray and white horses, rupture, external melanosis. Angioma: horse, ox. Lymphadenoma: horse, ox, external adenoma.
The different tumors of the spleen are usually secondary. The intimate structure of the organ, the peculiarity of the circulation through the pulp cavities, and the delay of the blood in the pulp spaces, predispose it in a very especial manner to the growth of neoplasms, the germs or bioplasts of which are carried in the blood.
Sarcoma. In the horse sarcomata have been found in the spleen secondary to similar tumors in the other parts of the abdominal and thoracic cavities. They may attain to any size, from a pea to the closed fist and, in exceptional cases, of a mass which practically fills and distends the abdominal cavity.
In the cow an encephaloid sarcoma in the spleen, weighed nine pounds and was associated with similar formations in the lymph glands generally of the abdomen and chest.
In the dog also sarcomata are common in the spleen.
Carcinoma. These are found in the horse in connection with similar primary tumors, as in the case of the sarcomata. They are at times extremely vascular and soft, and at other times they are hard and fibrous (scirrhus).
In the dog secondary cancer of the spleen is comparatively common.