For the nervous symptoms treatment must correspond to the morbid phenomena. Extreme prostration may demand diffusible stimulants. Spasms and other indications of congestion may be met by cold to the head, and inhalations of ether, followed by potassium or sodium bromide (8 grs.), sulphonal (20 grs.), trional (15 grs.) chloral hydrate in mucilage, or hypnal (15 grs.). Paralysis must be met by tonics, stomachics, easily digestible, rich food, and good hygiene. Pepsin, muriatic acid, nux vomica (½ gr.), arsenite of soda solution (5 drops), arsenite of strychnia (¹⁄₂₀ gr); orexin(3 grs.), strong coffee infusion, wine, and electricity may be tried, in addition to stimulant liniments. Chorea must be treated on the same corroborant plan. Cold douches after which the patient is carefully rubbed dry are sometimes successful, (see Chorea).
During convalescence and in all cases of debility and anæmia a similar corroborant treatment is demanded. Pulped raw meat, rich soups, stomachics, tonics including the preparation of iron, and in extreme cases transfusion of blood or a normal salt solution may be resorted to.
In cats a parallel course of treatment may be pursued, allowance being made for the smaller size of the animal and the great susceptibility of the feline patient to phenol.
INFECTIOUS BRONCHIAL CATARRH. BENCH SHOW DISTEMPER.
Under this name Glass describes an affection, milder than the usual distemper, but showing similar lesions and demanding an equivalent treatment. It is not self-limiting the same patient having suffered twice in the same year (an occurrence which is occasionally seen in distemper.) The incubation is 3 to 5 days. Diarrhœa is invariably present from the first, and the fæces slimy and at the end of a week slightly bloody. The affection is characterized by the predominance of the digestive disorder, the absence of skin eruption, the free shedding of the hair in long coated animals, the ulceration of the gums, tongue and lips, and the low mortality.
Bacteriological research must be invoked to determine whether this is only a form of distemper or if it is one of a group of diseases which have hitherto been known by that name.
EMPHYSEMATOUS ANTHRAX.
Definition. Historic notes. Geographical distribution. Animals susceptible: Young cattle after weaning, sheep, goats; horses, asses and white rats, have local swelling; dog, cat, pig, bird and man immune. Immune animals succumb if injected with lactic acid, or proteus vulgaris, or violently exerted (sarco-lactic acid). Causes. Bacillus anthracis emphysematosa, 3 to 10μ by 5μ, stains violet with iodine, anærobic, sporulates in living body, hence seen as rod, club, and round, spore. Lives in exudate, not in blood nor on surface. Table comparing with anthrax bacillus. Vitality: resists drying, cold, 98° F., weakened by 139°, sterilized by 212° F. for 20 minutes, by strong antiseptics. Lives in dense clay, hard pan, and waterlogged soils holding little oxygen. Accessory causes: lactic and other organic acids, overwork, potash salts, alcohol, salt, proteus vulgaris, micrococcus prodigiosa, low condition, debility, plethora, chills, change to warmth, youth, melting snows, freshets, drying of wet lands. Symptoms: incubation a few hours, disease 12 to 70 hours. Hyperthermia, swelling in loose connective tissue, shoulder, quarter, arm, thigh, neck, trunk, palate, base of tongue, pharynx, tender point, rapidly enlarges, spreads, crepitates, percussion resonance, finally cold, insensible, and withered. On incision black, bloody pulp, or frothy. Peripheral gelatinoid exudate. Subsidiary lymph glands enlarged. Cases with deep seated exudate. Diagnosis: from malignant œdema and anthrax. Lesions: early decomposition, bloating, in swelling blood extravasation with gas bubbles and lymph exudate, muscle beneath dirty brown or black, breaking down when pressed, shows waxy or fatty degeneration, and many leucocytes and cell forms. Lymph glands and plexuses blood gorged. Extravasation may be in internal organs. Liver congested. Spleen rarely enlarged. Treatment: Chloride of iron internally, ammonia iodide and ol. terebinth externally. Scarify and use hydrogen peroxide or potassium permanganate. Antitoxins. Prevention: drain and till soil, apply quicklime to muck, exclude new animals just from infected districts, disinfect buildings, close infected wells and streams, seclude the sick, burn, cook or dissolve carcasses, or fence graves. Bleeding purgation, diuresis, uniform good feeding, setoning. Immunization by heated and sterilized culture; by toxins passed through a porcelain filter; by minimum dose intravenously; by injection into trachea; by inoculation on tip of tail; by inoculation with Pasteur weakened virus; by heat sterilized virus.
Synonyms. Symptomatic Anthrax; Black Quarter; Quarter Ill; Black Leg; Rauschbrand; Charbon Symptomatique.
Definition. An acute infectious bacteridian disease manifested by hyperthermia, lameness, and a localized, hot, painful swelling on the shoulder, quarter, leg, neck, trunk or elsewhere, tending to emphysema, and gangrene and when incised showing black extravasated blood, clotted or frothy.