Treatment. An entire change of diet, to green food, roots, fresh milk, and soft mashes in limited quantity. Allow pure water freely. Adopt all precautions against contamination of the food by the feet or snout. The stomach may be quieted by oxide of bismuth (20 grs.) or salol (10 grs.) two or three times daily, and the tone and secretions of the stomach may be stimulated by bicarbonate of soda (1 dr.) and nux vomica (1 to 2 grs.) thrice daily. In addition pepsin and muriatic acid may be given with each meal in proportion adapted to its amount. A life in the open air, and an occasional soapy wash will do much to restore healthy gastric functions.
CHRONIC GASTRITIS IN THE DOG.
Causes: faults in diet, musty food, foreign bodies, poisons, lack of sunshine, retained fæces, parasites, ill health, chronic diseases, icy bath, septic drink. Symptoms: irregular appetite and bowels, fever, foul breath, red tongue, tartar on teeth, dullness, prostration, vomiting of mucus or bile, tender epigastrium, arched back, fœtid stools, emaciation. Treatment: regulate diet, sunshine, pure water, scraped muscle, soups without fat, antiseptics, calomel, pepsin, muriatic acid, strychnia.
Causes. The irregularity and variability of the food, overfeeding, highly spiced foods, putrid or spoiled food, musty food, the swallowing of pieces of bone, and of indigestible bodies, the consumption of poisons, the absence of open air exercise, the compulsory suspension of defecation in house dogs, and the presence in the stomach of worms (spiroptera, strongylus), are among the common causes of the affection. As in other animals, ill health, debility, lack of general tone, and chronic diseases of important organs (liver, kidney, heart, lungs) must be taken into account. The plunging into cold water when heated and the licking of septic water must also be named.
Symptoms. Appetite is poor or irregular, the nose dry and hot, the mouth fœtid, the tongue reddened around the borders and furred on its dorsum, the teeth coated with tartar, the animal dull and prostrate, vomits frequently a glairy mucus mixed with alimentary matters or yellow with bile, and there is constipation alternating with diarrhœa. The epigastrium is tender to the touch, the back arched, the fæces glazed with mucus or streaked with blood, and offensive in odor. Emaciation advances rapidly and death may occur from marasmus.
Treatment. Adopt the same general plan of treatment. Stop all offensive and irritating food, give regular outdoor exercise, free access to pure water, and every facility to attend to the calls of nature. Give plain easily digestible food in small amount. In the worst cases pulped or scraped raw meat, in the less severe mush, or well-prepared soups with the fat skimmed off, and bread added. Check the irritant fermentations in the stomach by salol, bismuth, salicylate of bismuth, or naphthol. In case of constipation give 8 to 10 grs. calomel. Then assist digestion by pepsin (5 grs.) and hydrochloric acid (10 drops) in water with each meal. If the bitterness is not an objection 1 gr. nux vomica may also be added.
ULCERATION OF THE STOMACH.
Causes: peptic digestion, paresis, caustics, irritants, acids, alkalies, salts, mechanical irritants, hot food, parasites, thrombosis, embolism, specific disease poisons, aneurism, tumors, infective growths, nervous disorder, debility, toxins of diphtheria, staphylococcus, etc. Symptoms: slight colics, tympany, emaciation, vomiting blood, tender epigastrium, dark or bloody stools, irregular bowels; in carnivora abdominal decubitus, arched back, bloody, mucous, acid vomit, colics after meals. Lesions: in horse erosions, ulcers, parasites, neoplasms, discolorations, extravasations; in cattle and dogs on folds, nature of ulcer. Treatment: restricted, digestible diet, lavage, anodynes, bismuth, antacids, antiseptics, salol, naphthol, chloral, pure water.
Causes. Gastric ulcers may arise from quite a variety of causes which determine necrotic conditions of the mucosa and the gradual invasion of the resulting lesion by destructive microbes. One of the simplest factors is the peptic juice, the stomach, being struck with paresis (in inflammation, fever, nervous disorder), while containing a quantity of its secretion, undergoes an autodigestion which affects particularly the lowest (pyloric) portion, toward which the liquid gravitates, and the free edges of the folds which are the most exposed to its action.
The swallowing of irritant and caustic agents (the mineral acids or alkalies, mercuric chloride, tartar emetic, antimony chloride, Paris green, arsenious acid, etc.) by corroding or causing destructive inflammation of the exposed mucous membrane may similarly operate. This is especially the case with monogastric animals, (horse, pig, dog, cat), as in the ruminants such agents tend to be diluted in the first three stomachs and rendered more harmless.