CHRONIC GASTRITIS IN RUMINANTS.
Causes: As in acute form, parasites, gravid womb, insufficient ration, overwork, exhaustive milking, chronic diseases. Symptoms: deranged appetite, rumination, pica, eructations, regurgitations, tympanies, colics after feeding, coated dung, diarrhœa, fever, hot clammy mouth, sunken eyes, small weak pulse, palpitations, emaciation, weakness, tender hypochondrium. Lesions: hypertrophy of gastric mucosa, granular epithelium. Treatment: tonic regimen, diet, green food, roots, sunshine, bismuth, salol, strychnia, pepsin, muriatic acid, common salt, counter-irritants.
Causes. These are in the main the causes of the acute affection. There may, however, be special persistent factors like parasites (strongylus contortus and filicollis, spiroptera) in the stomach, the pressure of a gravid womb, an alimentation deficient in lime or phosphorus, overwork, exhausting milking, or chronic disease of important organs (heart, liver, lung, kidney).
Symptoms. These are indefinite and not easily distinguished from those of disorders of the third stomach. There is impaired or capricious appetite, a disposition to eat lime, earth, and all sorts of non-alimentary objects, rumination is rare or altogether suspended, efforts to regurgitate are ineffectual, or result in gaseous eructations only, there are tympanies and abdominal pains especially after feeding, and constipation with a firm glazed appearance of any fæces passed, may alternate for a short time with diarrhœa. The mouth is hot and clammy, the eyes sunken and semi-closed, the pulse small and weak, though the heart may palpitate, and there is a constantly progressive emaciation and prostration. Among the more characteristic symptoms are tenderness of the right hypochondrium to manipulation and percussion, and the presence of slight hyperthermia.
Lesions. The changes consist mainly in hypertrophy of the gastric mucosa, with changes in the epithelium and submucosa such as are already described in the horse. The pyloric region suffers most, and here ulcers are not at all uncommon.
Treatment. The main aim must be to remove the causes, and to build up the general health, so that the patient may rise above the debilitating conditions. More is to be expected from the change of diet to green food, roots, mashes, etc., and an outdoor life than from the action of medicines, which are liable to disappear by absorption in the first three stomachs, so that they can only act on the fourth through the system at large. Yet benefit may be expected from the use of nitrate of bismuth, and salol, as calmatives and antiferments, nux vomica as a tonic and even from pepsin and muriatic acid as digestive agents. The two last are not dependent on the fourth stomach for their activity but will digest the contents more or less in the first three, and the finely disintegrated and partly peptonized ingesta coming to the fourth stomach in a less irritating, and less fermentescible condition, lessens the work demanded of that organ and gives a better opportunity for recuperation. Small doses of common salt and one or other of the carminative seeds may be added. The application of mustard or oil of turpentine to the right hypochondrium will sometimes assist in giving a better tone to the organ.
CHRONIC GASTRITIS IN SWINE.
Causes. Symptoms: inappetence, dullness, arched back, colic, irregular bowels, fever, emaciation. Treatment: diet, green food, milk, mashes, cleanliness, bismuth, salol, sodium bicarbonate, strychnia, pepsin, muriatic acid, sunshine, washing.
Causes. These are like those producing the acute affection which may easily merge into this by a continuation of such causes.
The symptoms too are alike. Inappetence, dullness, prostration, arched back, vomiting, colic, constipation, with alternating diarrhœa. There is hyperthermia with hot dry snout, thirst, increasing emaciation, and anæmia.