Diseases of cattle, sheep, goats and swineMoussu, G. (Gustave)
Science
Diseases of cattle, sheep, goats and swine
Moussu, G. (Gustave)
Veterinary medicine
=(b) Motor Dyspepsia.= Finally, it would appear that general bad health,
abstinence and exhausting work, may produce a form of dyspepsia,
unconnected with secretory disturbance, but resulting from mechanical
disturbance due to general enfeeblement and to atony of the muscular
walls of the gastric compartments. The rumen ceases to perform its work
of mixing the food, the reticulum also acts badly, and the abomasum
receives imperfectly prepared material. The result is what might be
described as motor dyspepsia, in opposition to those forms which are of
chemical origin.
The condition may vary in degree, peristalsis being diminished (one
contraction every two or three minutes instead of two per minute), or
being simply intermittent and occurring only for a few hours during the
day, or finally being altogether suppressed. Suppression is never
absolute, but atony may be so marked that the mixing of the food is very
imperfectly performed.
=Symptoms.= The most constant symptom present in all dyspeptic
conditions is chronic tympanites, indicated by a certain degree of
tension or by permanent dilatation of the rumen.
Rumination is impeded and irregular, the distended rumen loses its power
of contraction, and no longer causes eructation nor passes gas into the
intestine. It becomes progressively inert, whether the inertia be
primary and occur suddenly, as a result of some particular condition of
the sympathetic system (motor dyspepsia), or secondary and of slow
development in consequence of disturbance in the gastric secretions and
of abnormal organic fermentation (secretory dyspepsia).
This symptom of tympanites is always accompanied by irregularity,
diminution, and frequently also by depravity of appetite.
Wasting occurs, but to a very varying degree, according to the nature of
the primary condition and the method of feeding.
These general symptoms are accompanied either by constipation or by
diarrhœa; and as stagnation of food leads to fermentation, which always
forms products differing from those of normal digestion—toxic materials
in fact—a chronic auto-intoxication results, which in its turn, if not
remedied, becomes a cause of irritation, and aggravates the bad general
condition.
In many cases fever is absent, except during the final complications, in
animals in the last stages of wasting; but some signs always exist on
which the diagnosis may be founded.
The most frequent clinical type of these dyspeptic conditions is motor
dyspepsia, consisting in relative atony of the rumen without disturbance
in the secretion of the gastric mucous membranes. Luckily, this is the
most easily curable form, and is only marked by distension, dulness and
constipation.
Dyspeptic diseases of secretory origin are little understood. Their
essential causes have been badly described, and their clinical symptoms
are ill-recognised.
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