442 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



never advances further, and its true nature is to be recognized only hj the fact that 

 it shows itself in an infected herd or on infected premises, and that the victim proves 

 dangerously infecting to healthly animals in uninfected localities. It raay be likened 

 to those mild cases of scarlatina which are represented by sore throat only, or to the 

 modified variola known as chicken-pox. 



lu the majority of cases, however, the disease advances a step further. The animal 

 becomes somevrhat dull, more slugglish than natural, does not keep constantly with 

 the herd, but may be found lying alone ; breathes more quickly (20 to oO times per 

 minute in place of 10 to 15) ; retracts the margins of the nostrils more than formerly ; 

 the hair, especially along the neck, shoulders, and back, stands erect and dry ; the 

 muzzle has intervals of dryness, and the milk is diminished. The eye loses somewhat 

 of its prominence and luster ; the eyelids and ears droop slightly, and the roots of the 

 horns and ears and the limbs are hot or alternatively hot and cold. By this time the 

 temperature is usually raised from 103° F., in the slightest or most tardy cases, to 105*^ 

 and upward to 108=* in the more acute and severe. Auscultation and percussion also 

 now reveal decided changes in the lung tissue. 



The ear applied over the diseased portions detects in some cases a diminution of the 

 natural soft-breathing murmur, or it may be a fine crepitation, which has been likened 

 to the noise produced by rubbing a tuft of hair between finger and thumb close to the 

 ear. Where this exists it is usually only at the margin of the diseased area, while in 

 the center the natural soft murmur is entirely lost. In other cases a loud blowing 

 sound is heard over the diseased lung, which, though itself impervious to air and pro- 

 ducing no respiratory murmur, is in its firm, solid condition a better conductor of 

 sound and conveys to the ear the noise produced in the larger air-tubes. 



Percussion is effected by a series of taps of varying force delivered with the tips of 

 the fingers of the right hand on the back of the middle finger of the left firmly pressed 

 on the side of the chest. Over all parts of the healthy lung this draws out a clear 

 resonance, but over the diseased portions the sound elicited is dull, as if the percus- 

 sion were made over the solid muscles of the neck or thigh. All gradations are met 

 with as the lung is more or less consolidated, and conclusions are to bo drawn accord- 

 ingly. 



In other cases we hear on auscultation the loud, harsh, rasping sound of bronchitis, 

 with dry, thickened, and rigid membranes of the air-tubes, or the soft, coarse, mucns 

 rattle of the same disease when there is abundant liquid exudation, and the bursting 

 of bubbles in the air passages. In others there is a low, soft, rubbing sound, usually 

 in jerks, when the chest is being filled with or emptied of air. This is the friction be- 

 tween the dry, inflamed membrane covering the lungs and that covering the side of 

 the chest, and is heard at an early stage of the disease, but neither at its earliest nor 

 its latest stage. Later there may be dullness on percussion up to a given level on one 

 or both sides of the chest, implying accumulations of liquid in the cavity, or there 

 is a superficial dullness on percussion, and mufSing of the natural breathing sound 

 with a very slight, sometimes almost inaudible, creaking, due to the existence of false 

 membranes (solidified exudations) on the surface of the lung or connecting it to the 

 inner side of the ribs. This is often mistaken for a mucous rattle that can no longer 

 take place in a eousolid.ated lung in v, hich there can be no movement of air nor burst- 

 ing of bubbles in breathing. The mucous rattle is only possible with considerable 

 liquid exudation into the bronchial tubes, and a healthy, dilatable condition of the 

 portion of the lung to which these lead. In rare cases there will be splasljing sounds 

 in the chest, or when the patient has just risen to his feet a succession of clear ringing 

 Bounds, becoming less numerous and with longer intervals until they die away al- 

 together. These are due to the falling of drops of liquid from shreds of false mem- 

 brane in the upper part of the chest through an accumulation of gas into a collection 

 of liquid belovr. It has been likened to the noise of drojjs falling from the bung-hole 

 into a cask half filled with liquid. Peculiar sounds are sometimes heard, as wheezing, 

 in connection with the supervention of emphysema, and others which it is needless to 

 mention here. 



In lean patients pressure of the tips of the fingers in the intervals between the ribs 

 will detect less movement over the diseased and consolidated lung than on the op- 

 posite side of the chest vrhere the lung is still sound. 



As seen in America, in winter, the great majority of cases fail to show the violence 

 described in books. The patients fall off rapidly in condition, sliow a high fever for 

 a few days, lie always on the same side (the diseased one) or on the breast, and have 

 a great portion of one lung consolidated by exudation and encysted as a dead mass, 

 and yet the muzzle is rarely devoid of moisture, the ndlk is never entirely suspended, 

 and may be yielded in only a slightly lessened amount as soon as the first few days of 

 active fever have passed. 



During the extreme boats of summer, on the other hand, the plague manifests all 

 its European violence. The breathing becomes short, rapid, and labored, and each ex- 

 pixation is accompaixied by a deep moan or grunt, audible at some distance from the 



