Roche-Lubin speaks of this disease as common in flocks, as the result of moving them around for twenty-four hours in a narrow enclosure covered with dust which is raised in a cloud and settles in the fleece so as to increase its weight. The fever and excitement caused by the constant driving and the local action of the infected dust on the respiratory mucous membrane is said to bring about the intense exudative inflammation. It has been seen especially in the spring in young lambs shortly after weaning. Damman claims that he transmitted the disease to sheep by inoculating the diphtheritic exudate of the calf.
Symptoms. There were constant movements of the jaws, with the accumulation of frothy saliva round the lips or the drivelling of this secretion from the mouth, the discharge of a viscid white material from the nose, difficulty of deglutition, hurried, panting, snuffling breathing, swelling and tenderness of the throat, and the occurrence of cough and the discharge of mucopurulent matter whenever it was pressed. The head and neck are held rigidly extended, the eyes are dull or glazed, the appetite is completely lost, the mucosæ red and cyanotic and the animal weak and unsteady upon its limbs. By the third or fourth day respiration has become so difficult that the mouth is held constantly open, the tongue protruded and the painful convulsive cough leads to the expulsion by the nose and mouth of shreds of false membrane. Careful examination of the nose or of the fauces may detect the grayish or yellowish patches of false membrane at an earlier stage. Death by asphyxia is common.
Lesions do not differ materially from those seen in the calf. The inflammation and pseudomembranous exudate may extend as far as the trachea and bronchia in which case the indications of death by asphyxia are clearly marked.
Treatment is the same as for the calf. Tepid drinks slightly acidified with muriatic acid, or the addition to the drinking water of one pound of sulphate of soda to every fifty sheep has been especially recommended. Fumigation with sulphurous acid or chlorine is easy of application in flocks. As alternatives for addition to the water may be named hyposulphite or bisulphite of soda, borax, carbolic acid, or spirits of turpentine. For treatment individually swabbing the throat with antiseptics and dilute caustics, electuaries, and hot poultices to the throat may be tried.
PSEUDOMEMBRANOUS PHARYNGITIS IN SWINE.
Prevalence in herds, in close pens, and in young. Relation to swine plague and hog cholera. Symptoms: sore throat, prostration, hoarse cough, yellowish discharge with shreds of false membrane, pellicles on mouth, fauces, tonsils. Diagnosis from swine plague. Treatment: Isolation, disinfection, antisepsis to throat, febrifuges.
This has long been recognized as a contagious affection, occurring especially where the animals were kept in herds and too often in close and filthy pens. These are more liable in youth than in maturity, partly no doubt because the older animals have already suffered and attained to an immunity. Modern observation has shown that pharyngitis with formation of false membranes is especially common in swine plague, and the present tendency is to refer all such cases to that category. It is however altogether probable that the occurrence of local irritation with the addition of an irritant or septic microbe altogether distinct from those of swine plague or hog cholera, gives rise at times to this exudative angina. Certain it is that septic poisoning with the food is not at all uncommon in the hog, in the absence of these infectious diseases.
The symptoms are those of severe sore throat with profound prostration, a hoarse, painful cough, a yellowish discharge from nose and mouth, and great muscular weakness. The base of the tongue, tonsils and soft palate are red and tumid with here and there grayish or yellowish patches of false membranes. The identification of swine plague may be made by the history of the outbreak, the number of animals affected, the tendency to pulmonary inflammation, the enlarged lymph glands, the presence of the non-motile bacillus which does not generate gas in saccharine media, and which readily kills rabbits and Guinea-pigs with pure cultures of the germ.
Treatment will depend largely on the nature of the attack—swine plague or simple pseudomembranous infection. Isolation, cleansing and disinfection will be demanded in both cases. In swine plague all additional precautions to prevent its spread must be resorted to. In the simpler exudative inflammations the antiseptic local treatment and general febrifuge measures will be demanded.