Most commonly these early local symptoms are overlooked until attention is drawn by some lack of control of the hind quarters. When moved the animal sways or staggers behind, knuckles forward at the fetlocks and drags the toe along the ground. This weakness encreases, and although for a time the animal can stand steadily, he is liable to fall when we make him take a step, and when down he will require help to get up. In advanced stages the animal remains recumbent and cannot be made to stand even with help, the fore limbs have become implicated in the paralysis, and in the end the respiratory muscles are involved and the patient dies asphyxiated. This marks the occurrence of severe lesions in the medulla oblongata. Incontinence of urine is a frequent symptom. Fever usually sets in, in advanced cases. Recoveries may take place from the first and second stages, the control of the muscular system improves, the animal lies down and rises with greater ease, the drooping penis is retracted within the sheath, incontinence of urine ceases, micturition becoming less frequent and more abundant at a time, and finally muscular control becomes once more perfect. Convalescence may be complete in eight days if it begins early, while it may require two or three months when the disease has been more advanced.
Some subjects survive without overcoming the paralysis, so that they simply eat their heads off if preserved.
Diagnosis. From hæmoglobinuria this disease is to be distinguished by the history which fails to show its supervention on a period of hard work and high feeding, followed by one or more days of rest and then sudden exercise; by the swelling ecchymosis and discharge from the vulva or sheath, and by the occurrence of several cases in animals that have had an opportunity for a common infection. In case of death the condition of the kidney, bladder and urethra, and the marked congestion of the lumbar portion of the cord is significant, the congestion, petechiæ and extravasations are deeper and the glairy discharge is present.
Prognosis. From one-fourth to a third of the animals attacked either die or are rendered permanently useless.
Treatment. Antiseptic washes and irrigations of the genito-urinary passages, and the adjacent parts, if employed early enough, would tend to abort the disease. Even if resorted to later, they would be of some value in limiting the multiplication of the microbe and the absorption of its toxins. For this purpose boric or salicylic acid, salicylate of soda, permanganate of potash, or silver nitrate may be taken as examples. They should be as thoroughly applied as possible, the bladder being thoroughly evacuated and injected several times a day. As internal medication, oil of turpentine and other stimulant antiseptics that are eliminated by the kidneys might be tried in small doses frequently repeated. Keep in slings. The patient that cannot stand up is lost.
Prevention. This consists in isolation of the healthy, thorough disinfection of the stalls, gutters, combs, brushes, rubbers, blankets, and the hands of attendants. Litter used for the sick should be burned and manure piles secluded and disinfected. Even flies are to be dreaded, so that darkness in the stable, fly nets, fly screens, and insect powder and other means of insect destruction will be in order. Sponges and other means of dressing should not be used indiscriminately on different animals.
PROTOZOAN CATTLE FEVER. TEXAS FEVER. PALUDISM OF CATTLE.
Symptoms. Definition: protozoan, tick-borne, febrile, affection, of wild damp lands, and warm seasons, with enlarged spleen and liver and hæmolysis. Historic Notes; Old World; Australia; tropical and subtropical America. Causes: contact of cattle from salubrious districts with the insalubrious or with cattle from such; Piroplasma bigeminum; a bovine parasite, reducing red globules by ¾ths.; successive forms of piroplasma; the cattle tick, boöphilus bovis, bearer of piroplasma; demonstration of the tick agency; toxic saliva of tick; toxic property in blood; question of identity of infection-bearing ticks. Lesions: putrefaction rapid, icterus, ticks, blood oozing in skin, hydræmia, hæmoglobinæmia, few red globules, small petechiæ, slight serous exudates and effusions: congestion, petechiation, sloughing, perforation of gastric mucosa, congestion of intestinal mucosa, in rectum like port wine; liver enlarged, congested, biliary radicles in acini gorged with bile; spleen enlarged, engorged; kidneys œdematous, blood-stained; bladder petechiated; urine opaque or red, in convalescence watery; womb; fœtus. Incubation three to ten days; delays due to hatching of ticks. Symptoms: Acute case: anamnesis; hot season; hyperthermia 104° to 109° F.; hurried breathing and pulse; anorexia; dulness; costiveness; icterus; prostration; weakness; delirium; urine turbid, red; blood hydræmic; diarrhœa; emaciation. Duration one to seven days. Fatal (90%) to exotic cattle; mild in indigenous, or cool season. Mild case; temperature 103°, anorexia, dulness, costiveness, enuresis, albuminuria, pallid mucosæ, emaciation, round protozoön in globules, ticks, oligocythemia. Differential diagnosis, from anthrax. Treatment: laxative; antiseptic; mucilaginous food; picking off ticks; anti-ixodic lotion; tick-free pasture or place. Prevention: destruction of ticks; picking; dipping or smearing with tick killing preparation, paraffin or extradynamo oil and sulphur, danger with shipping; dressing of all cattle at intervals during warm season; cultivation of tick-infected land; exclusion of cattle for one summer and two winters; soil cattle for three weeks in each of two tick free pens, to let ticks drop; danger of nonimmunized cattle in infested area; suggestions for extinction by States. Immunization: Infection of sucking calf; infecting by a few ticks: by graduated injections of piroplasma blood; technique; injection of blood from body of tick. Limited value of artificial tolerance. Marketing of the beef. Federal restrictions.
Synonyms. Splenic fever; Spanish fever; Mexican fever; Southern cattle fever; Australian tick fever; Tristeza; Red water; Black water; Bovine periodic fever; Bovine yellow fever; Maladie du bois; Holzkrankheit; Moor evil; Wood-ill; Ixodic Anæmia; Roumanian hæmoglobinuria.
Definition. A specific fever of cattle, enzoötic during the warm seasons in the low, malarious grounds and wooded or uncultivated districts of different countries, caused by a protozoön in the blood and red globules, which is conveyed from animal to animal by ticks, and leading to engorgement of the spleen and liver, destruction of the red globules, hæmoglobinuria, and oligocythemia.