Lesions. In the horse ulcers and erosions occur in the cardiac sack in connection with œstrus larva and spiroptera which destroy and remove the cuticular covering, or with sarcoma or epithelioma growing in the gastric walls. In the right sac there may also be round ulcers from the hooklets of the œstrus, or irregular excavations on the summits of the folds in connection with catarrhal inflammation. Ulcers from autodigestion are usually in the right sac, in the most dependent part of the viscus, between the folds, and of a more or less circular outline. The raw surface is black, brown, slaty gray or white. The ulcers which result from petechial fever are irregularly notched and marked by a mass of dark blood coagulated in their depth.
In cattle and dogs the ulcers are most frequent near the pylorus, and when of catarrhal origin may be round or irregular, and on the summit of the fold, or if peptic, may be round and between the folds. In malignant catarrh and rinderpest, they are mostly formed on the summits of the folds. They may vary in size from a pea to a quarter of a dollar. The surrounding mucosa is usually congested, swollen, and projecting, and the surface of the ulcer itself of a dark red, black, yellowish, slaty or gray.
The round ulcer is usually marked by surrounding infiltration and by a tendency to become deeper and to perforate the gastric walls, with the result of inducing an infective peritonitis. This is more common in cattle and carnivora than in solipeds.
Treatment. If a reasonably certain diagnosis can be made the patient should be put on a restricted diet of easily digested materials, given at regular intervals. For the carnivora scraped or pulped raw meat, and milk, and for the herbivora milk and well boiled flax seed or other farina are appropriate.
Violent emesis in carnivora may demand washing out of the stomach with tepid water with or without the aid of a stomach tube. This may be seconded by anodynes, chloral, cyanide of potassium, or even morphia.
Bismuth trisintrate or oxide is appropriate in all animals, also sodium bicarbonate, chalk or magnesia to neutralize the muriatic acid.
As antiseptics calculated to obviate the formation of irritant products from the gastric contents and to check the progress of the microbian infection in the wound such agents as the following may be used: Salol (horse or ox 1 dr., dog 5 grs.), naphthol or naphthalin (same doses), chloral (horse 2 drs., dog 5 grs.).
Sometimes it is well to relax the bowels by small doses of Glauber salts, and in all cases an abundance of fresh water, butter milk, or other bland drink.
Cases of the kind are slow in their progress and unless the animal is specially valuable, treatment may be a source of loss.