Dog and Cat. The lesions are often concentrated on the respiratory or alimentary tract, but they have been noted also in the pharyngeal glands, tonsils, posterior nares, serosæ, liver, pancreas, spleen, nerve centres, ovary, uterus, testicle, epididymus, tunica vaginalis, prostate, heart, aorta, bones and joints. They follow the regular development of bovine tubercle, and caseation and cretefaction are prominent features. These animals are especially liable to infection by eating the left victuals from the plate of a consumptive owner, as well as by devouring consumptive prey, and the primary lesions are to be looked for along the line of the throat, bowels, liver and lungs. For the dog Cadiot records caseating polypi and ulcers on the mucosa of the larynx, trachea and bronchia, and Müller and Cadiot several cases of pharyngeal caseating adenitis in the dog bursting externally and developing intractable fistulæ, having abundance of bacilli in the discharge. These he attributes to expectorated virus from old standing tubercles in the chest infecting the pharyngeal mucosa and indirectly the lymph glands. The infection entering with the food and lodging in the follicles of the tonsils would act in the same way, and infected wounds received in fighting must also be quoted. Cats suffer from similar intractable sores, some of which may be traced to a tuberculous origin. The lungs are often extensively hepatized and of a general pale grayish color, but the early miliary lesions, the caseating and cutaneous centres, the vomicæ often intercommunicating, the tuberculous bronchial and mediastinal glands and the bacilli show the true nature. Intestinal ulcers are common, especially on the agminated glands, and small tubercles, in all stages of degeneration are met with in the enlarged liver, the spleen, pancreas, kidney, etc.
Apes and Menagerie Animals. In these tuberculosis is common alike in the thoracic and abdominal forms, and the lesions in the main are those of domestic cattle.
Chickens. The lesions are common in the abdominal cavity, the intestines, liver and spleen being the most frequently attacked, while the subcutaneous connective tissue, bones and joints also suffer. The lungs and kidneys usually escape. The intestinal mucosa shows small nodules, often caseated, or ulcers; the enlarged and friable liver is studded with tubercles from the size of a hemp seed upward, gray or translucid, homogeneous or with central necrosis, simply or in conglomerate masses, with congested or hæmorrhagic periphery; the spleen is swollen and permeated by similar deposits; fibrinous ascitis is not uncommon; the abdominal lymph glands are enlarged and congested.
The early tubercle shows a central, necrotic, hyaline area, consisting of the debris of disintegrated cells, which is colored brown by picro carmine, unlike the nucleus of the pheasant tubercle (Cadiot). Around the hyaline centre is a zone of large epithelioid cells, the nuclei of which stain strongly in carmine. Outside this is the usual zone of small, round, lymphoid cells. In the whole the tubercle bacilli can be made manifest by the carbol-fuchsin (Ziehl-Neelsen) stain. In the older and larger tubercles the central necrotic mass has encroached in part or in whole on the epithelio-lymphoid zone.
Pheasant. The lesions have the same seats and naked-eye aspect as the chicken tubercle, but under the microscope the smallest and most recent tubercles show epithelioid cells to the centre, or later, the central zone presents a dense fibrous network enclosing open spaces and giving a mahogany stain with Lugol’s solution (iodine and potassium iodide). (Cadiot). There has been an organisation of connective tissue which has submitted to amyloid degeneration, making a clear distinction from the tubercle of chicken.
Parrot. The lesions were thus located by Eberlein and Cadiot:
| Cadiot. | Eberlein. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Eye and periocular region, | 12 | 14 | |
| Commissure of the beak, | 7 | 11 | |
| Tongue, | 8 | 9 | |
| Palate, | 4 | ||
| Larynx, | 2 | ||
| Bones and Articulations, | Upper limbs (wings), | 7 | 14 |
| Claws, | 3 | ||
| Cervical, Dorsal and Caudal, | 5 | ||
| Lungs, | 7 | ||
| Liver, | 4 | ||
| Intestine, | 3 | ||
| Muscles, | 1 | ||
| Heart, | 1 | ||
The skin lesions are vascular neoplasms containing bacilli and usually invested with a covering of horn, but sometimes, on the legs and feet raw. The morbid growth may be rounded or conical, narrowing to a point. The lesions of the buccal mucosa begin as small, grayish swellings on the angle of the mouth, palate, tongue or larynx which grow out into more or less rounded vegetations. The lesions of the liver and lungs are mostly miliary with the usual tubercular features, but they may grow to larger size, as a pea or bean. In the cancelli of bones and on their surface, the lesions resemble those of the mammal.
The cutaneous form has been held to be the counterpart of warty lupus of man, the more plausibly that the disease is developed by inoculation from tuberculous men. The arthritic type represents what is described as gout in parrots.
In any case the recent miliary lesion presents the true tubercular type of a central giant cell or cells with bacilli, surrounded by epithelioid cells, and they in turn by small, rounded lymphoid globules.