INCONTINENCE OF URINE (PALSY OF THE NECK OF THE BLADDER).
This may occur from disease or injury to the posterior part of the spinal cord or from broken back, and in these cases the tail, and perhaps the hind limbs, are liable to be paralyzed. In this case the urine dribbles away constantly, and the oiled hand in the vagina or rectum will feel the half-filled and flaccid bladder beneath and may easily empty it by pressure.
Treatment.—Treatment is only successful when the cause of the trouble can be remedied. After these (sprains of the back, etc.) have recovered, blisters (mustard) on the loins, the lower part of the abdomen, or between the thighs may be resorted to with success. Two drams of copaiba or of solid extract of belladonna or 2 grains Spanish flies daily may serve to restore the lost tone. These failing, the use of electric currents may still prove successful.
URINARY CALCULI (STONE OR GRAVEL).
Stone or gravel consists of hard bodies mainly made up of the solid earthy constituents of the urine which have crystallized out of that liquid at some part of the urinary passage, and have remained as small particles (gravel), or have concreted into large masses (stone, calculus). (See [Pl. XI], figs. 1, 2, 3.) In cattle it is no uncommon thing to find them distending the practically microscopic tubes in the red substance of the kidney, having been deposited from the urine in the solid form almost as soon as that liquid has been separated from the blood. These stones appear as white objects on the red ground formed by cutting sections of the kidney, and are essentially products of the dry feed of winter, and are most common in working oxen, which are called upon to exhale more water from the lungs and skin than are the slop-fed and inactive cows. Little water being introduced into the body with the feed and considerable being expelled with the breath and perspiration in connection with the active life, the urine becomes small in amount, but having to carry out all waste material from the tissues and the tissue-forming feed it becomes so charged with solids that it is ready to deposit them on the slightest disturbance. If, therefore, a little of the water of such concentrated urine is reabsorbed at any point of the urinary passages the remainder is no longer able to hold the solids in solution, and they are at once precipitated in the solid form as gravel or commencing stone. In cattle, on the other hand, which are kept at pasture in summer, or which are fed liberally on roots, potatoes, pumpkins, apples, or ensilage in winter, this concentrated condition of the urine is not induced, and under such circumstances, therefore, the formation of stone is practically unknown. Nothing more need be said to show the controlling influence of dry feeding in producing gravel and of a watery ration in preventing it. Calculus in cattle is essentially a disease of winter and of such cattle as are denied succulent feed and are confined to dry fodder as their exclusive ration. While there are exceptions, they are so rare that they do not invalidate this general rule. It is true that stone in the kidney or bladder is often found in the summer or in animals feeding at the time on a more or less succulent ration, yet such masses usually date back to a former period when the animals were restricted to a dry ration.
In this connection is should be noted that a great drain of water from the system by any other channel than the kidneys predisposes to the production of gravel or stone. In case of profuse diarrhea, for example, or of excessive secretion of milk, there is a corresponding diminution of the water of the blood, and as the whole quantity of the blood is thus decreased and as the urine secreted is largely influenced by the fullness of the blood vessels and the pressure exerted upon their walls from within, it follows that with this decrease of the mass of the blood and the lessening of its pressure outward there will be a corresponding decrease of urine. The waste of the tissues, however, goes on as before, and if the waste matter is passed out through the kidneys it must be in a more concentrated solution, and the more concentrated the urine the greater the danger that the solids will be deposited as small crystals or calculi.
Again, the concentrated condition of the urine which predisposes to such deposits is favored by the quantity of lime salts that may be present in the water drunk by the animal. Water that contains 20 or 30 grains of carbonate or sulphate of lime to the gallon must contribute a large addition of solids to the blood and urine as compared with soft waters from which lime is absent. In this connection it is a remarkable fact that stone and gravel in the domesticated herbivora are notoriously prevalent on many limestone soils, as on the limestone formations of central and western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan; on the calcareous formations of Norfolk, Suffolk, Derbyshire, Shropshire, and Gloucestershire, in England; in Landes in France, and around Munich in Bavaria. It does not follow that the abundance of lime in the water and fodder is the main cause of the calculi, as other poisons which are operative in the same districts in causing goiter in both man and animal probably contribute to the trouble, yet the excess of earthy salts in the drinking water can hardly fail to add to the saturation of both blood and urine, and thereby to favor the precipitation of the urinary solids from their state of solution.
The known results of feeding cattle a generous or forcing ration in which phosphate of lime is present to excess adds additional force to the view just advanced. In the writer's experience, the Second Duke of Oneida, a magnificent product of his world-famed family, died as the result of a too liberal allowance of wheat bran, fed with the view of still further improving the bone and general form of the Duchess strain of Shorthorns. Lithotomy was performed and a number of stones removed from the bladder and urethra, but the patient succumbed to an inflammation of the bowels, induced by the violent purgatives given before the writer arrived, under the mistaken idea that the straining had been caused by intestinal impaction. In this case not only the Second Duke of Oneida, but the other males of the herd as well, had the tufts of hairs at the outlet of the sheath encased in hard, cylindroid sheaths of urinary salts, precipitated from the liquid as it ran over them. The tufts were in reality resolved into a series of hard, rollerlike bodies, more or less constricted at intervals, as if beaded.
When it is stated that the ash of the whole grain of wheat is but 3 per cent, while the ash of wheat bran is 7.3 per cent, and that in the case of the former 46.38 per cent of the ash is phosphoric acid, and in that of the latter 50 per cent, it can easily be understood how a too liberal use of wheat bran should prove dangerous if fed dry. The following table shows the relative proportion of ash and phosphoric acid in wheat bran and in some common farm seeds: