This is an acute eczematous eruption of cattle beginning as a congestion and swelling of the skin and advancing to an exudation or secretion which bedews the surface with a sticky discharge, and concretes into scabs and crusts.
Causes. The disease has been mainly seen in work oxen during winter, when kept in close, foul stables and not properly groomed. It is also seen in dairy cows and may be attributed to the indigestion and gastric disorders which come from the ingestion of spoiled fodders, or from a too stimulating diet, such as Indian corn, wheat, buckwheat, barley, cotton seed, and the seeds of the leguminosæ. Lafosse looked upon it as contagious, but Cadeac denies both this and its alimentary origin.
Symptoms. The attack is severe, the skin becoming swollen, hot and tender, especially at the base of the tail, on the neck, chine and forehead. Soon the turgid, congested skin exudes a somewhat glutinous serous product, which mats the hairs into tufts and exposes the intervening red, excoriated skin, with here and there vesicles singly or in groups. Itching is usually intense and the animal licks, rubs and scratches the affected surface unmercifully. The resulting excoriations and sores add greatly to the severity of the troubles, including ulceration, bleeding and even sloughing.
Treatment. Prophylaxis should be the first consideration, and in the acute stages of the disease, its arrest by soothing applications. Cleanliness, pure air, and tepid sponging, to be followed by a dusting powder of boric or salicylic acid, or a lotion of acetate of lead or sulphate of zinc may serve a good purpose. If the case proves obstinate, the hair may be clipped or shaved to allow of the more direct and thorough application of the dressings. Cadeac especially recommends an ointment of calomel (1 ∶ 10) but this must not be applied over an extended surface, nor must it be recklessly repeated owing to the dangerous susceptibility of the bovine race to mercurialism.
Lotions and ointments of carbolic acid are of great value in moderating the intense pruritus, and a combination of this with lead acetate will often prove quite effective. Lotions, liniments or ointments of tar, oil of cade, creosote, or creolin. When ulcers are present they may be treated by solutions of silver nitrate (2 ∶ 100) or cupric sulphate (2 ∶ 100) or powdered iodoform. When the exudate is excessive, astringent dusting powders often serve a good purpose; tannic acid and boric acid, with starch or lycopodion.
CHRONIC ECZEMA IN CATTLE.
Summer disease. Depilation. Scaly. Itchy at first. Lesions of bones, red zones representing successive attacks. Alterative tonics indicated.
Megnin records the case of an ox which on three successive springs had a miliary vesicular eruption on the loins and upper walls of the abdomen, which persisted until the advent of cold weather in the fall. The vesicles were followed by an exudate which concreted in solid crusts, enveloping the roots of the hairs which were lifted from the follicles and failed to be renewed, so that the animal entered on the winter with an appearance of alopecia. The denuded surface was red, shining and covered with a dense covering of lamelliform epidermic scales. In the early stage of the eruption there was moderate pruritus, but when the scaly stage was reached it was neither tender nor itchy to any marked degree. Tar ointments had no effect in stimulating the growth of the hair, and the skin remained bald until the next attack. The second and third years the eruption extended farther, invading not only the trunk, but the legs, and passing through the same successive stages.
The animal was butchered and the shafts of the bones were found to be abnormally red, and showed three concentric rings of deeper brown, manifestly representing the three acute attacks and resembling the concentric rings formed in growing bones when the young animals are fed on madder.
The manifest disorder of nutrition in this chronic skin disease, is an argument for the treatment by alterative tonics, such as arsenic, as well as for the employment of tonics and corroborants in general. In such cases the presumption is that local treatment would be useless or nearly so until the general disorder could be repaired.