Lerein notices jaundice as a sequel of impacted crop, and recommends treatment by sulphate of soda in the water.
TYMPANITIC INDIGESTION IN THE RUMEN. BLOATING.
Definition. Susceptible Genera. Causes; gastric paresis, overloading, cold, fear, exhaustion, poisons, fermentescible food,—new grain, leguminosæ, frosted vegetables, ruminitis, foreign bodies in rumen, microbian ferments. Symptoms, abdominal, general. Gases formed under different aliments—carbon dioxide, marsh gas, hydrogen sulphide, nitrogen, oxygen. Lesions, rupture of rumen or diaphragm, compression or rupture of liver or spleen, petechiæ, congestion of lungs and right heart, of cutaneous and cerebral vessels. Prevention, avoid indigestible and fermentescible aliments, correct adynamic conditions, tonics, avoid injurious ferments, make alimentary transitions slowly. Treatment, exercise, bath or douche of cold water, rubbing and kneading, rope round abdomen spirally, gag in mouth, dragging on tongue, movement of a rope in fauces, probang, stimulants, antiseptics, alkalies, ammonia, oil of turpentine, oil of peppermint, alcohol, ether, pepper, ginger, soda, potash, lime, muriatic acid, carbolic acid, creosote, creoline, sulphites, kerosene, chloride of lime, chlorine, tar, common salt, hypochlorite of soda, magnesia, eserine, pilocarpin, barium chloride, colchicum, lard, trochar, Epsom salts, rumenotomy. Treatment of diseased gullet, mediastinal glands, stomach or intestines.
Definition. The condition is a combination of paresis of the rumen and gaseous fermentation of its contents. The initial step may be the paresis or in the more acute forms the fermentation.
Genera susceptible. While all ruminating animals are subject to this disorder, it is much more frequent in cattle and sheep than in goats.
Causes. It commences in paresis of the rumen in the weak, debilitated, convalescent or starved animals which are suddenly put on rich, and appetizing food. Hence it is common in animals that break into a cornbin, a store of potatoes, a field of growing corn or small grain, or that are turned out on green food in early spring. Cadeac maintains that paresis of the rumen is the essential cause in all cases, while the nature of the aliments ingested fills a secondary and comparatively insignificant rôle. According to this view the torpid stomach can neither relieve itself through regurgitation for rumination, nor expel through the œsophagus the constantly evolving gas which therefore distends the viscus to excess. In support of this view may be adduced the occurrence of tympany through fatigue, fear, cold, enlarged (tubercular) mediastinal glands pressing on the gullet and vagus, obstruction of the œsophagus by a solid body (choking), impaction of a morsel of solid food in the demicanal of the calf as noticed by Schauber, and the cessation of the normal vermicular movements of the rumen in connection with inflammation of its coats, or extensive inflammation elsewhere or finally of fever. Even in paralysis of the stomach by poisons like lead, tympany may be a result. Cadeac attributes tympany following the ingestion of green food wet with a shower, or drenched with dew, of frosted potatoes or turnips, or of iced water, to the paralyzing action of the cold on the rumen. This view is manifestly too extreme, as the bloating occurs often after a warm summer shower, or after the consumption of potatoes and other roots and tubers which have been spoiled by frost but which are no longer at a low temperature when consumed.
Tympany may also start from the ingestion of certain kinds of food which are in a very fermentescible condition. Green food, especially if the animal has been unaccustomed to it, is liable to act in this way. Clover and especially the white and red varieties, lucern (alfalfa), sainfoin, cowpea and other specially leafy plants, which harbor an unusual number of microbian ferments, and which contain in their substance a large amount of nitrogenous material favorable to the nourishment of such ferments are particularly dangerous in this respect. All of these are most dangerous when wet with dew or when drying after a slight shower, partly no doubt at times by reason of the chilling of the stomach, but mainly because the ferments have been stimulated into activity by the presence of abundance of moisture. Drenching and long continued rains are less dangerous in this respect than the slight showers and heavy dews, manifestly because the former wash off a large portion of the microbes, which under a slight wetting multiply more abundantly.
Frosted articles act in a similar way, partly when still cold by the chilling and paralyzing of the stomach, but cold or warm, by reason of the special tendency of all frozen vegetables to undergo rapid fermentation when thawed out. This is true of green food of all kinds when covered by hoarfrost, of turnips, beets, potatoes, carrots, apples, cabbage, etc., which have once been frozen, and of frosted turnips and potato tops, though, in the case of the latter agent, a narcotic principle is added.
In the case of Indian corn, the smaller cereal grains, and certain leguminous plants (vetches, tares, peas, beans) which have the seed fully formed but not yet quite hardened nor ripened, there is the double action of a paralyzing constituent and an aliment that is specially susceptible of fermentation.
Inflammation of the rumen, already quoted as a cause, may be determined by hot as well as cold food, by irritant drugs and poisons, and by narcotico-irritant and other acrid plants in fodder or pasture. In the same way the inflammation caused by the introduction of foreign bodies into the rumen, such as nails, tacks, needles, pins, wires, knife blades, and masses of hair or wool may at times cause tympany.