Abdominal tuberculosis is most common in the young foal and when not secondary, may be due to feeding on tuberculous milk, especially in those brought up by hand on cow’s milk. There is debility, emaciation, anæmia, irregular appetite, digestive disorder, constipation alternating with diarrhœa, colics, pot-belly, falling in beneath the lumbar transverse processes, dry, harsh, scurfy skin and advancing marasmus. Rectal exploration will usually detect the enlarged sublumbar and mesenteric glands, and the simultaneous manifestations of disease of the lungs, superficial lymph glands, throat, or bones serve to identify the disease.
In the advanced stages of tuberculosis in solipeds polyuria is a frequent phenomenon (Nocard) tending to hasten the general anæmia and marasmus.
The patient often works for months or years but with gradually encreasing debility, which is soon fatal after the occurrence of generalized tuberculosis.
In estimating the nature of the disease, indications may often be drawn from the environment, feeding, etc. Nocard as the result of a careful study of the morphology and habits of the bacilli has shown that the more purely abdominal form of equine tuberculosis is near akin to that of the chicken, while the pronouncedly pulmonary form resembles the human type. McFadyean on his part adduces a number of cases of tuberculosis in horses that had been fed largely on cows’ milk, a most significant fact considering that such a ration is rare for this animal, and that few horses contract tuberculosis casually. Exposure therefore to the sputa of man, of the nasal or bowel products of birds or to the milk of cows, may suggest the probability of tuberculosis in a horse with chronic anæmia, debility and wasting.
The discharges from the nose of the affected horse are more available than those of cattle for examination and experimental inoculation, yet in many occult cases the diagnosis by tuberculin is the only reliable resort.
SYMPTOMS OF TUBERCULOSIS IN SHEEP AND GOATS.
The tubercles have been usually found post mortem in these animals or as the result of experimental inoculation, and symptoms have not been well recorded. They follow the same order as in the ox, weak husky cough, wheezing and other râles in the lungs, disorders of the digestive organs, swollen lymph nodes and glands, and caseated products in those that were of some standing. I have found these latter especially, in the region of the throat in high bred rams kept in confined buildings or yards and highly fed to prepare for letting or sale. These lose in vigor and activity and scrofulous swellings form on the neck, head or elsewhere and become rapidly caseated. In German abattoirs tuberculous sheep proved 0.1 to 0.15 per cent. In Saxon goats the percentage was 0.6.
SYMPTOMS OF TUBERCULOSIS IN DOGS AND CATS.
These follow in the main those of consumptive cattle. As the infection generally enters with food, the early symptoms often point to disease of the throat and alimentary tract, while the later ones involve those of the respiratory organs as well. Impaired and capricious appetite, debility, early exhaustion under exertion, emaciation, sunken pallid eyes, apathetic expression of the face, lack of life and gaiety, a knotted feeling of the abdomen if the region is flaccid, and a tense fluctuating sensation if ascitic, with usually enlargement of the superficial lymph glands are noticeable.
When the chest becomes affected there is the hurried breathing, quickly encreased by exertion, panting, paroxysmal cough, wheezing, and the various morbid râles in the chest, crepitant, friction, creaking, blowing, cavernous, mucous, etc. On percussion, flatness is detected in limited areas in a number of centres. Expectoration is usually promptly swallowed and can only be secured with difficulty for examination.