Lesions. In cattle killed during the early stages, circumscribed hæmorrhages and petechiæ are found in the nose, trachea, bronchia, gastric and intestinal mucosæ, cerebral membranes, pleuræ, peritoneum, bladder, and skin. In many cases these are accompanied by congestion and thickening of the walls of the lymphatics, and effusion in and under the skin in different parts of the body, but especially along its lower aspect—(belly, sternum, dewlap, limbs, lower jaw, tongue)—of a gelatinoid exudate, which raises the skin abruptly in the form of a thick cushion. At first this is soft and tremulous, but later it may have coagulated giving a great degree of resistance to the structure. Extensive cracks, fissures, and sloughs, and unhealthy sores form on these swellings. Franck especially notes the enlarged tongue gorged with blood and yellowish exudate as in gloss-anthrax. The blood extravasation may be further evidenced in the black or blood-streaked fæces, the reddish urine, and a rosy tint of the milk.
Symptoms. The animal is dull, sluggish, moves stiffly and with difficulty, and shows hyperthermia, (102° to 106° F.), inappetence, impaired or suspended rumination, heat of the roots of the ears and horns, and of the dry muzzle; the spine, and usually certain points beneath the sternum or abdomen at which swellings are about to appear, are tender to the touch. On the affected parts of the skin the temperature is raised, and there may be detected pea-like elevations which become surrounded and enveloped in extensive swellings that pit on pressure. The swellings show a preference for the thinner and looser parts of the skin, and gravitate rapidly toward dependent parts. Thus, the eyelids, roots of the ears, intermaxillary space, throat, muzzle, dewlap, ventral aspect of the body, axilla, mammæ, scrotum, groin, thigh, knee and hock are favorite spots, the liquid rapidly gravitating downward through the loose connective tissue to the lowest points. The face becomes infiltrated to unsightly dimensions, interrupting prehension and threatening suffocation, the dewlap swells up to a great size, the forearms or thighs become rounded and tense, and a thick pad forms along the ventral aspect of the body. The white skin on such swellings becomes red, they may ooze a yellowish liquid or blood, the surface becomes depilated, scaly and rough, chaps and cracks appear, going on, it may be, to deep fissures, more particularly at the flexures of the joints, on the throat or muzzle, or on other points that are subjected to pressure. Necrosis of great patches of skin is not uncommon, and these sloughing off leave large wounds with unhealthy, indolent surface and little disposed to rapid healing.
The petechiæ show early on the muzzle, the nasal and buccal mucosæ, and on other mucous membranes. Exudations also appear and a serous, often bloody, discharge escapes from the nose and concretes in colored encrustations around the nostrils. The nose may be obstructed causing the animal to breathe through the open mouth, protruding the tongue which is often also the seat of extensive swelling, discoloration and induration.
As the disease advances there is encreased dullness and prostration, marked emaciation, and anæmia, sunken eyes, encrusted eyelids, extensive areas of depilation including even the long hairs of the tail, and quite often an abundant bloody diarrhœa.
The affection may last for 24 to 40 days and under rational treatment the majority survive. There remains, however, in a certain number of cases, a permanent enlargement and fibrous induration from the organization of the exudate.
Diagnosis. A fully developed case is easily recognized. The fever and constitutional disorder, complicated by petechiæ on the mucosæ and skin; the extensive swellings suddenly formed, oozing serum or blood, and tending to fissures and necrosis; and the discharge of blood from the nose, bowels, kidneys and udder, in the absence of the bacilli of anthrax, emphysematous anthrax, malignant œdema, and wildeseuche; the slower progress; the low mortality; the occurrence on a damp, springy, or impermeable soil, or one known to produce this disease; and especially if in late summer or autumn, become virtually pathognomonic.
Prevention. Seclude cattle in late summer and autumn especially, from soils known to be productive of this affection and above all from damp wet clays, underlaid by hardpan, from swamps, from drying up ponds and basins, from wet river bottoms and deltas and from springy fields generally. Fields of this kind may be reserved for cultivated crops or for raising hay. The fundamental remedy is thorough drainage, and a subsequent abandonment of the land for a year or two to other crops to allow of a dissipation of the poison. Sudden chills after being heated or fatigued, and exposure in the pasture in cold nights are to be avoided.
Treatment. The French writers up to the present extol bleeding for the early stages. Its benefit must apparently depend on the diminution of the blood tension allowing the distended capillaries to resume their normal contractility, and in the lessening of the tendency to exosmosis, and the encrease of endosmosis so that much of the poison in the blood is removed and what remains is largely diluted and rendered comparatively harmless. However well this may operate in the strong and plethoric, it cannot be considered as applicable to the weak or anæmic, nor to advanced cases in which the vital powers are already seriously reduced by the abundant exudations and extravasations, and by the narcotic and devitalizing action of the circulating toxins.
With us the demand is usually met by laxatives and diuretics, under the idea that these are less debilitating and that if the morbid process can be arrested recovery is more prompt and perfect. A purge of sulphate of soda is followed by full doses of nitrate or acetate of potash, in combination with iodide of potassium, or chlorate of potash; or bicarbonate of soda associated with hyposulphite of soda. These or other diuretics should be pushed so as to produce free diuresis. Stimulating antiseptic diuretics like ol. terebinth, may be added. Iodine solutions injected into the trachea have been recommended as for the horse (Huber, Heuberger, Rohr,) and the serum or silver preparations or adrenalin may be tried.
Locally astringents and antiseptics have given good results. Solutions of alum or lead acetate with carbolic acid and iodine; frictions with soap liniment, with a mixture of aqua ammonia, oil of turpentine and oil, or with mixtures of oils of origanum, cajeput and peppermint, and iodine, or simple painting with tinct. of iodine may be cited. Fissures and open sores may be dressed with mercuric chloride solutions (1:1000), Lugol’s solution, phenic acid lotion, solution of creolin, lysol, or chloronaphtholeum, camphorated spirit, or other antiseptic agent. The nose should be injected, cleared of eschars, and if necessary propped open.