Tokishige describes cases in which it extended along the respiratory mucosa, causing constriction of the nasal passages and larger bronchi, with dyspnœa, and finally, invading the lung. In other cases it spread from the prepuce, or scrotum, upward along the tunica vaginalis, spermatic cord and testicle. Caparini and Ferner describe it in the orbit, affecting the lids, nictitans, conjunctiva and adjacent parts, with nodules and abscesses. Mazzanti describes the case of a filly which died with pea-like nodules on the colon, and ulceration, with dirty, black, purulent centres, and indurated borders. Tokishige describes the affected cattle as showing a vast number of subcutaneous, hard, painless nodules, varying in size from a hazel nut to a walnut and covered by light colored skin. The nodules were isolated and not connected by swollen, beaded lymph vessels. They encrease and suppurate much more slowly than in the horse. In three cows microscopically examined he found apparently the same branching fungus (saccharomyces), as in the horse cases. The mortality is about 10 per cent.
In the farcy of the ox of Guadaloupe there form subcutaneous nodular abscesses, with cordiform swelling of the lymph plexus and trunks, often proving fatal in a year through extension to the lungs. The abscess breaks, discharging a whitish, creamy or caseous, or grumous contents, containing a bacillus (Nocard). The abscesses usually appear under the sternum or belly and later extend to the thighs and legs. In all such cases the mallein test is inoperative.
The treatment of such cases should be actively antiseptic to destroy the germ while still local. After opening and evacuating the abscesses, excise or curette the diseased tissue, or destroy with the actual cautery, pack the cavities with pledgets soaked in tincture of iodine, iodized phenol creolin, lysol, mercuric chloride, zinc chloride, or copper sulphate, or dusted with aristol, iodoform, or iodized starch. The surrounding swelling, if any, may be painted with tincture of iodine, or covered with cloths wet with a sublimate lotion or other antiseptic. Internally, tonics and antiseptics may be given: arsenite of strychnia, quinia, iron or copper sulphate, sulphites or hyposulphites of soda or potash.
RABIES AND HYDROPHOBIA.
Synonyms. Definition: Acute, infectious, cerebral disease, of domestic and wild carnivora, shown by intellectual, emotional, and aggressive nervous disorder, and extreme nervous excitability. Animals susceptible: canine and feline animals, biting animals and those bitten, of all warm blooded kinds; receptivity greatest in carnivora. Geographical distribution: where population is most dense, trade and movement most active—north temperate zone. Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Azores, St. Helena immune—protected by quarantine. Islands in Elbe, places with enforced muzzling. Causes: contagion; inoculation; rutting; skunk bites; absence of flowing robes (men, children). Virulent matters: saliva, bronchial mucus, flesh, blood (not in sheep?), milk, (in advanced stages), nerve tissue. Morbific agent particulate; filtered liquid noninfecting: blastomyces, bacillus, found but not uniformly: claims of brain symptoms from each. Viability; saliva virulent for 11 days; brain 3 weeks at 32° to 63° F., for months aseptic and in contact with carbon dioxide; water 20 to 38 days; body in grave 44 days; virulence lost by drying in thin layer yet kennels remain long infecting; glycerine preserves; robbed of virulence by iodine, citric acid, bromine, chlorine, sulphurous and mineral acid and cupric sulphate. Bites of men effective to 50 per cent., protection by clothes, wool, flow of blood, cleaning of teeth by succession of bites. Infection by licking, sneezing, coughing, inhaling, feeding. Incubation 15 to 60 days in dog, 20 to 45 days in horse, 14 to 60 days in sheep, swine and cattle, 14 to 64 days in man. Prolonged cases doubtful. Symptoms in dogs: change in disposition, more amiable or morose, dull, apathetic, excitable, unwonted silence or howling, restless, depraved appetite, swallowing small objects, searching, tearing sticks or clothes, licking cold stone or genital organs, hiding in dark corner, dull expression, irritation where bitten, hoarse voice, rabid howl, eyes follow unreal objects, snaps at them, listens for unreal sounds, irritability, fury when threatened with stick or shown another dog, bites without growl, bears master’s blow in silence, eyes red, fixed, pupils dilated, squinting, lonely wandering, biting, swimming rivers; restless excitement alternates with torpor and seclusion, slouching gait when worn out; in paralytic form; weakness, paresis, palsy of lower jaw, hind limbs, body, dull, prostrate, apathetic; in lethargic form; no fury nor paralysis, but profound prostration and apathy, no coaxing, threat, punishment not even another dog will rouse. Paralytic and apathetic forms wind up the furious; cases with intermittent attacks. Diagnosis: by marked change of disposition or habit, voice, appetite, any hypersæthesia, strabismus, watching or snapping at unreal objects, taciturnity, fury in presence of other dog or stranger, snapping, biting without giving voice, fury when threatened with stick, open mouth without disposition to paw it, lack of muscular coördination, paresis, paralysis. Distinction from lactation anæmia, bone in palate or throat, dislocation of maxilla, stomato-pharyngitis, cutaneous hypersæthesia, pharyngeal anthrax, epilepsy, pentastoma, cysticercus, filaria immitis, nematodes, and tæniæ, auricular acariasis. Symptoms in cats: changed voice, depraved appetite, hiding, restlessness, irritability, bites, scratches, man or dog. Symptoms in solipeds: trembling, hyperæsthesia, easily startled, ears and eyes alert, dilated flashing pupils, roused by dog or stranger, attacks with teeth and heels, mischievous, pawing, kicking, rolling, rising, straining to urinate or defecate, neighing, sniffling, snorting, everting upper lip, grinding teeth, biting, stiffness or impaired control of limbs, generative excitement, spasms, paralysis, hyperthermia, perspiration. Symptoms in cattle: irritability, restlessness, alert head, ears, eyes, squinting, dilated pupils, loud bellowing, lashing tail, or docility, yet pursues a dog, using horns, heels, (exceptionally teeth), stamps, paws, has genital excitement, anorexia, spasms, weakness, paraplegia. Symptoms in sheep and goat: hyperæsthesia, irritability, genital excitement, fury in presence of dog, stamps, butts, paws, snorts, bleats, grinds teeth, becomes paretic, and paraplegic. Symptoms in camels and deer: camels show furious and paralytic forms, biting and snorting; deer have hyperæsthesia merging into paralysis. Symptoms in swine: extreme irritability, restlessness, start at slightest cause or none, tremors, squealing, jerking, grinding teeth, clenching jaws, bite especially a dog, or not, weakness, lethargy, paralysis. Symptoms in rabbits and Guinea pigs; may be furious, more often paralytic. Symptoms in birds: restlessness, ruffling of feathers, pecking or striking man or dog, or at phantom, palsy. Symptoms in wild carnivora: lose fear of man, approach and attack him, are furious and later paralytic. Skunks bite slyly. Symptoms in man: irritable cicatrix, anxiety, sighing, tremor, insomnia, bad dreams, fever, thirst, spasms of throat when seeing, hearing or taking liquids, dyspnœa, retching, vomiting, spasms, roused by noise, squinting, dilated pupils, mental delusions, reticence, taciturnity, suspicion, mania, exhaustion, paresis, paralysis. Lyssophobia, its detection and cure.
Synonyms. Canine madness; Rabidus Canis; Lyssa; Lytta; Cynolyssa.
Definition. Rabies is an acute, infectious disease, affecting the cerebral and medullary nervous centres and characterized by intellectual, emotional, aggressive and other nervous disorders and by extreme reflex excitability.
Animals susceptible. While the disease is seen most frequently in the canine races (dogs, wolves, foxes and jackals), and in the cat family (cat, lion), it is liable to spread widely among animals that use the teeth as weapons of offense, and such as they can readily attack. When inoculated, all warm blooded animals contract the disease. Thus the carnivora and omnivora (dog, wolf, fox, hyena, jackal, cat, lion, badger and skunk and, to a less extent, the pig and horse) may become active propagators of the infection, which may spread widely among their herbivorous victims (cattle, sheep, goats, deer, rats, mice, chickens and pigeons) through their bites. Man suffers mainly through the attacks of dogs, cats and, in certain localities, wolves or skunks, but he is also liable to become infected from handling rabid domestic herbivora. Different genera differ in susceptibility, the receptivity being apparently greatest in the carnivora.
Geographical Distribution. Rabies is confined to no country nor climate but it attains its greatest prevalence in the north temperate zone, where there is the densest population and where activity of travel favors the propagation of infection. The facility for inoculation is the one determining cause, thus the islands of Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, the Azores and St. Helena have never suffered and the first three exclude the disease by rigid inspection and quarantine. During the Hamburg epizoötic of 1852–53, the islands in the Elbe escaped though both banks were ravaged. Again, where the muzzling of all dogs has been rigidly enforced, as in many German cities and districts the disease has been practically extirpated.
Etiology. Long before the days of pathological bacteriology rabies was recognized by veterinarians as a disease due to infection alone. Its absence from the various countries above named, and from South and West Africa, its rapid propagation in other countries (La Plata, Malta, Hong Kong) into which it had been introduced for the first time, and its restriction and disappearance wherever muzzling had been strictly carried out, had practically settled this question. The development of the disease in animals which had been experimentally inoculated was no less significant of this truth.