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
_Symptoms._ Rumination is slow and irregular, appetite capricious,
tympanies appear after each feed, and there is a marked tendency to
aggregation of the ingesta in solid masses, which resist the
disintegration and floating which is necessary to rumination, and favor
the occurrence of putrid fermentation. There is usually a tendency to
lick earth, lime from the walls, and the manger, and a depraved appetite
shown in a desire to chew and swallow foreign bodies of many kinds.
Vomiting or convulsive rejection of the contents of the rumen is not
unknown (Vives, Pattaes). There is slight fever with heat of the horns
and ears, dry muzzle, and tenderness to pressure on the left flank. The
bowels may be alternately relaxed and confined, and bad cases may end in
a fatal diarrhœa. In other cases the disease may become acute and
develop nervous symptoms, as in tympany and impaction. When the disease
takes a favorable turn, under a careful ration, recovery may be complete
in eight or ten days.
_Lesions._ These are violet or brownish patches of hyperæmia on the
mucosa of the rumen, circumscribed ecchymoses, exudates in the sense of
false membranes and even pin’s head ulcerations. On the affected
portions the mucosa is swollen, puffy, dull and covered with mucus, and
epithelium may desquamate. The papillæ are often red, and thickened or
shrunken and shortened. In the specific affections like aphthous fever
and sheeppox the lesions are rounded vesicles containing liquid. The
ingesta is more or less packed in masses.
_Treatment._ If irritant foreign bodies have been taken rumenotomy is
demanded. If caustic alkalies, acetic or other mild acid. If acids, lime
water or magnesia. Feed well boiled flax seed, or farina gruels, and
wheat bran or middlings in limited quantity. Solids may be at first
withheld, coarse or indigestible food must be. It may be necessary to
rouse the organ by 10 or 12 ozs. of sulphate of soda with a little
common salt and abundance of thin gruels as drink. As a tonic the animal
may take nitrate of bismuth ½ oz., powdered gentian ½ oz., and nux
vomica 20 grains, twice a day. The application of a mustard pulp or of
oil of turpentine on the left side of the abdomen may also be resorted
to. A weak current of electricity through the region of the paunch for
twenty minutes daily is often of great service.
HAIR BALLS IN THE RUMEN AND RETICULUM. EGAGROPILES.
Balls of hair, wool, clover hairs, bristles, paper, oat-hair,
feathers, chitin, mucus, and phosphates. Causes: Sucking and licking
pilous parts, eating hairy or fibrous products. Composition. Symptoms:
Slight, absent, or, gulping eructation, vomiting, tympany, in young
putrid diarrhœa, fœtid exhalations, emaciation. Diagnosis. Treatment.
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