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
_Symptoms._ In slight cases of shock whether by lightning or the current
of a hanging live electric wire, the subject may be simply dazed and may
or may not fall to the ground, and recover itself in a very few minutes.
In other cases there is a more violent shock which prostrates the animal
to the earth, where it may lie unconscious for some hours and yet
quickly and completely recover. In still other cases after such
prostration recovery is incomplete and the animal remains affected with
paresis or paralysis of one or more, commonly of both hind, or all four
limbs. In the more violent shocks death is instantaneous.
Often the impact and course of the current are marked by visible
lesions. Sometimes the skin is wounded exposing a bluish black tissue
beneath. More commonly there is an area of burnt hair, or straight,
radiating or angular lines of raised and frizzled hair marking the
course of the current. In a horse killed by an electric light wire in
Ithaca recently the current had burned to a depth of several inches in
the muscles of the shoulder which rested on the wire.
_Lesions_ are often rather indefinite. There may be no appreciable
change in the nervous system. Rigor mortis is slight; it passes off
rapidly and decomposition sets in early. The venous system and
capillaries are usually filled with liquid blood of a dark bluish black
color, and at intervals are points, spots and patches of blood
extravasation. The uniformly liquid state of the blood is one of the
most marked phenomena of death from electricity. The dark blue
congestion of the radical veins is also very pathognomonic, the part
struck or traversed by the main current, being the seat of the most
elaborate arborescent network. This arborescent appearance of the dark
colored veins, and the petechiæ are often marked in the internal organs
(brain, kidneys, liver, lungs).
_Diagnosis._ The environment of the animal will often clear the
diagnosis. The patient is found helpless, or dead under a tree, by a
pole, or under a hanging wire, and if a tree there are evidences of the
electric shock in scattered leaves and branches, stripping off of the
bark, or perhaps rending of the tree in pieces. In case of wires
attached to or passing near such a tree, the supporting poles show
similar splitting and rending. Add to these the fluidity of blood in the
carcase, the thickly ramifying network of the minute dark bluish, red
veins, the petechiæ and the comparative absence of cadaveric rigidity,
and we have a picture very significant of lightning stroke.
_Treatment_ in such cases is according to the condition. The primary
unconsciousness is met by inhalations of ammonia or ether, or the
injection of brandy or alcohol subcutem. Caffein, atropine or hyoscyamin
may be used as substitutes. If consciousness returns recovery is usually
rapid and complete. Should paresis or paralysis remain it must be
treated like any ordinary case of these affections.
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