The temperature range is peculiar. At the start there may be some hyperthermia 103° or 104°; with the advance of the disease it tends to become lower, 98°, 96°, or 94°. When improvement sets in, it rises again promptly to the normal.
Cadeac describes a special form which is ushered in by great restlessness, bellowing, throwing the head to right and left, grinding the teeth, sucking the tongue, salivation, licking of certain parts of the body, spasms in the neck, back or limbs, and prompt recovery, or lapse into the comatose condition as above described. It proved less fatal than the ordinary comatose type, but seems to depend on similar conditions.
Prognosis. Mortality. The disease is very deadly, the mortality in time past having reached 40, 50 or even 60 per cent., the gravity increasing as the disease set in nearer to parturition. Cases occurring on the first or second day were mostly fatal, those at the end of the first week were hopeful, and those occurring during the second week were very hopeful. With the Schmidt (iodine) treatment the mortality is claimed to be reduced to 16 or 17 per cent.
Prevention. Measures directed toward the lessening of plethora tend to remove one of the most fruitful causes of the disease and though not invariably successful, are yet of great value. The most direct is the abstraction of blood in the last fortnight of pregnancy, to the extent of 6 or 8 quarts. This tends to secure a lessening of the blood tension, and blood density, but there is the drawback of a created tendency to a subsequent increase in blood formation to make up the loss. This measure should be reserved for cows that are very plethoric, extra heavy milkers and such as have already suffered from the disease.
Purgatives will measurably secure the same end without the same degree of danger. One to two pounds of Epsom or Glauber salts in the last week of gestation, or at latest when labor pains set in, tend not only to remove solid or impacted masses from the first and third stomachs, and inspissated contents from the large intestines, but to secure a free depletion from the portal system. If not before, this should always be given immediately after parturition to cows in extra high condition, heavy milkers, and that have had a short and easy delivery.
Restriction of food for a week before and as long after parturition is of equal importance. A very limited supply of aqueous, easily digested, and laxative food (roots, sloppy bran mashes, fresh grass, ensilage) will meet the demand.
Exercise in the open air is of great value in giving tone to the muscles, and especially the nervous system, and in stimulating the emunctories and other functions.
In the cold season protection against cold draughts and chills must be seen to, and in the hot season the avoidance of an excess of solar heat and above all of the confined impure air of the barns.
At midsummer and later, there is often great danger in the rich clover and alfalfa pasture, or soiling crop, with which the cow will dangerously load her stomach, and the only safe course is to remove predisposed animals and shut them up in a bare yard or box-stall. Under such simple precautions herds that had formerly suffered severely, have had the disease virtually put a stop to.
In individual cases other measures are indicated. When the udder has reached an enormous size and development, and is gorged with milk, days before parturition, it should be systematically milked. The irritation in the gorged gland is quite as likely to induce premature parturition, as is milking, and, at the worst, the result is not so bad as an attack of parturition fever.