Symptoms. The skin of the eyelids and other parts of the body presents itchy, red, hot and swollen patches, which gradually pass into a pustular eruption. The pustules no larger than a millet seed, burst in forty-eight hours, and discharge a yellowish or purulent liquid which concretes around the eyelashes or bristles, and glue the eyelids together. The crusts may increase so as to cover the affected part of the skin by a dense scabby covering which is firmly adherent and when detached leaves a bleeding surface. It may extend to the different mucosæ of the eye, nose or mouth. The disease runs a course of twenty days or less being retarded by the extremes of temperature. During the heats of summer the attendant pruritus is very great and annoying. During convalescence the scabs and crusts gradually detach themselves and drop off leaving the healthy skin covered at first by a somewhat delicate epidermis.
Treatment is confined to cleanliness, soapy washes, emollient ointments and astringent lotions (lead acetate, sulphuric or hydrochloric acid) but no premature detachment of scabs is permissible. Saline laxatives and diuretics are often called for.
VESICULAR IRRUPTION IN PIGS. PITCHY AFFECTION. SEBORRHŒA.
This also affects the young and is characterized by the successive appearance of vesicles, pustules and scabs or crusts. Friedberger and Fröhner associate it with debility from youth, disease or neglect, from articular rheumatism, rachitism, hog cholera, etc., but also as a result of lying on manure, and the accumulation of sebaceous matter and filth of all kinds on the skin.
Symptoms. Among the symptoms of general disorder are dullness, inappetence, prostration and slight fever. There is red eruption with vesicles and even pustules on the early rupture of which the discharge concretes into a black pitchy layer. It may be at first most marked on the ventral aspect of the body, but usually extends to the whole integument.
Treatment. Where it is not dependent on some grave internal disorder, this commonly yields to soapy washes, generous food and a clean pen.
GRANULAR ERUPTION IN SWINE.
Zschokke describes a disease of this kind affecting the ears, back and croup, and caused by a micrococcus in the epidermis and papillary layer of the derma. It appears in the form of patches, often of the size of the palm, showing bluish gray papules which dry up without forming pustules. It runs a chronic course and produces little or no itching.
Treatment would consist in absolute cleanliness, soapy or alkaline washes, and the free use of solutions of the hyposulphites, sulphites, or other antiseptics which are neither irritant nor poisonous.
Urticaria is met with in swine as already noticed.