Commissioner of Agriculture 293 



characteristic blisters takes place on the mouth, nose, between the 

 fingers, around the nails, and more rarely on the eyes or dis- 

 tributed over the body at large. With the formation of the 

 vesicles, or very soon after, there comes a diminution of the body 

 temperature to the normal, or nearly so (as in smallpox). In 

 irregular cases the eruption on the skin may be tardy or imperfect, 

 a red flush and troublesome itching taking the place of the vesicles. 

 The vesicles vary in size from a millet seed up to a pea, or, by 

 coalescing, up to one half-inch across, and, as in cattle, lacking 

 the preliminary hard nodule (shotty feeling) of smallpox. They 

 are evenly rounded without flattening or pitting, and each consists 

 of a single undivided sac from which all the serum can be pressed 

 out through a small needle prick. Sometimes on mucous or other 

 moist surfaces'they are represented by simple red granulating spots 

 which scab over or remain as depressed sores when the scabs are 

 picked off. The sores are subject to complex infections, with 

 swellings, chapping, cracking and even the formation of matter. 



On the back of the mouth, in the nose and throat the vesicles 

 and sores, with attendant swelling, may interfere with breathing 

 or even threaten suffocation. They are attended with increased 

 secretion of saliva, slavering, perhaps driveling, of the liquid 

 from the mouth, or the gathering of froth about the lips, frequent 

 movement of the jaws, and a smacking sound, like that of the 

 affected cattle, heard even when the patient is asleep. The sores 

 usually heal promptly, although they may enlarge for a time 

 through death of tissue 1 around their margins. 



When formed around the nails they are especially likely to run 

 together into one, and, exceptionally, extend under the nail and 

 lead to its being shed (Bollinger). • 



In this simple form the disease usually lasts 8 days, but when 

 complicated or specially grave may extend to 4 or even S weeks. 



SEVERE CASES 



In the case of children, or even older persons infected by drink- 

 ing milk, the constitutional symptoms are more severe. High 

 fever, headache, pains in the back ami limbs, with a sense of great 

 depression and debility, may bo combined with complete loss of 

 appetite, nausea, vomiting (which may persist -°> or 4 days), 

 pain in stomach ami abdomen, aggravated hy coughing or 



