Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 3 (of 5)Law, James
Science
Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 3 (of 5)
Law, James
Veterinary medicine
With =optic vertigo=, the attendant conditions will help to a diagnosis.
The animal has come from darkness to full sunshine; there is the white,
icy or snowy reflection everywhere which the animal was facing when
attacked, or the glistening lake or river, the overdraw check rein, or
the blind with perhaps a shining inner surface. The pupil is closed, and
the eye is rolled back or oscillates in one direction or another. The
symptoms are checked by covering the eyes or removing the subject into a
dark building or even into the shade of a tree or shed.
With =aural vertigo= there may be similar rolling of the eyes, without
the pupillary closure, the ear may be drawn down or back, and the
shaking or jerking of the head is likely to be a marked feature. If
there is more motion of one ear than the other, if the head is jerked to
the one side, if there is a measure of deafness in the one ear (to be
ascertained rather in the intervals between attacks), if there is
disease of the pharynx, the Eustachian tube or pouch, or swelling about
the root of the ear, if there is wax, scurf, or acarus in the ear, if
the animal rubs it frequently, aural vertigo may be suspected.
=Nasal vertigo.= Those forms in which the head is jerked horizontally,
vertically, or diagonally, the animal pressing against its mate or the
pole, or outward in the harness, and getting out of its track, even if
it should stop short of falling, and which appear only during work, or
are aggravated by exertion, have been attributed to lesions of the ear
(Fleming), but in some cases they can be warded off by wearing a net
over the nostril, and can be entirely stopped by complete transverse
section of the pes anserina, so that in a certain number at least they
must be accounted nasal. These are not usually attended by sneezing. The
simple expedient of driving with a rather close net over the nostril may
enable one to diagnose many of the purely nasal forms.
=Plethoric vertigo= may be suspected when the attack comes on in spring,
in a fleshy or fat horse, overfed and little exercised, when there is
dark red congestion of the nasal mucosa and conjunctiva, and a
subsidence with rest.
In the _vertigo_ of brain lesions, the acute forms are attended by fever
and marked signs of delirium or disordered nervous functions, while in
the chronic forms there may be permanent hyperæsthesia or anæsthesia,
general or with rather diffuse limits, and the vertiginous attacks
repeat themselves frequently irrespective of weather, though they may be
precipitated by faults of feeding, indigestion, severe exertion, or some
of the other exciting causes above mentioned.
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