Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 2 (of 5)Law, James
Science
Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 2 (of 5)
Law, James
Veterinary medicine
_Causes._ The enteritis of swine has been long considered as infective
or septic, yet this is perhaps mainly due to the nature of the food too
often furnished to this animal in a state of domestication. Not only is
he fed on swill containing all kinds of over-kept food, in a state of
more or less advanced decomposition, but he is kept in a pen or yard
which soon becomes offensive, and following his natural instincts he
roots around with his nose in the accumulating filth. When fed he
plunges this foul snout in his liquid food, and as if this were not
enough the fore feet follow, and if the trough is long enough the hind
feet as well. Every available saprophytic microbe therefore finds its
way down his throat, and the toxins from their growth outside the body
accompany them to irritate or benumb the mucosa and fit it for the
attacks of bacteria, which would otherwise have proved harmless. But in
addition to all this, chemical irritants get into the swill and pave the
way for the microbes. Salt, brine, and the various caustic washing
powders used in washing dishes and tables find their way into the swill
barrel often in quantity sufficient to irritate and poison. In
experiments conducted at the N. Y. State Veterinary College the washing
powders have been proved to be most deadly, and upon different farms, a
mortality attributed to hog cholera, has again and again been arrested
by preventing the entry of these powders into the swill barrel.
_Symptoms._ There is dullness, inappetence, hyperthermia (105°), a
tendency to lie under the litter, leaving the herd, when raised the pig
arches his back, moves stiffly with grunting, the tail and ears pendent,
and the belly tender to the touch. The bowels are at first constipated,
and thirst ardent, later diarrhœa may set in, and the skin and snout may
have red blotches or patches as in hog cholera. Tympanies and abdominal
rumblings are frequent. The animal becomes very dull, weak, emaciated,
staggers in walking or is completely paraplegic.
It may end fatally in twenty-four or forty-eight hours, or death may be
deferred for six or eight days or the disease may merge into the chronic
form, or recover. The usual foul surroundings of the pig and the
abundance of microbes and toxins taken in, serve to make enteritis in
this animal much more redoubtable than in other domestic animals.
The _lesions_ are usually common to stomach and intestine, and consist
in abundant mucopurulent discharge, extensive congestion, points and
extensive patches of blood extravasation, and of lymph infiltration,
ulcers, congested peritoneum and mesenteric glands, and congestions and
ecchymosis in distant organs.
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