CRYPTOGAMIC POISONING IN SOUPEDS. 



Prominent symptoms, asthenia and vertigo. Vary with cryptogam, 

 merge into zymotic diseases. Causes : grain harvested damp and moulded, 

 bluish or greenish, hay greenish white, brown or black, clover reddish, 

 musty fodder, and diuresis, indigestion, gastric intestinal and systemic 

 paresis, somnolence, delirium. Rusts, spring and summer, their evolution. 

 Bunt, smut, produce fever and paralysis, spasms, abortions and dry gan- 

 grene, buccal erosions ; evolution of ergot, honey dew on leguminous plants 

 causing skin disease, bacterial ferments, diplococcus, streptococcus from 

 foul water, causing enteritis. Symptoms : adynamic, dullness, blunted 

 sense, pendent head, ears, eyelids, congested, yellow, ecchymosed con- 

 junctiva, fever, tympany, colic, constipation, dung small, round, coated 

 masses, vertigo, sometimes fatal diarrhoea, or colliquative diuresis ; 

 vertigifwus : fever, anorexia, yellow mucosae, tardy breathing, costiveness 

 colics, stupor, somnolence, giddiness, heavy steps, stumbling, delirium, 

 push head against wall, clinch jaws, grind teeth, make walking or trotting 

 or plunging motions, or pull on halter and fall, amaurosis, paralysis, coma. 

 Remissions. Death in one day or upward. Resumption of functions and 

 recovery. Diagnosis : from meningo-encephalitis. Lesions : gastro-intes- 

 tinal congestion, infiltration, ecchymosis, fermenting ingesta, congestion of 

 mesenteric glands, liver, brain and meninges. Leucin and tyrosin in urine. 

 Treatment : stomach pump, antiferments, potassiimi iodide, purgatives, 

 enemata ; for brain, bleeding, sedatives, ice, snow, elevation, derivatives, 

 prevent mechanical injury. 



The most prominent featnre.s of crj^ptogamic poLsoning in 

 these animals are asthenia and vertigo. In dealing with such 

 poisoning, however, we must bear in mind that we have in hand, 

 not one particular disease but a group, differing among them- 

 .selves according to the cryptogam and its products which may be 

 present : — a group moreover which overlaps more or less the true 

 zymotic diseases. 



Causes. Oats, barley and other grain or fodder which has been 

 put up damp, and especially ground feed, becomes speedily over- 

 grown and permeated with moulds, especially penicillium 

 glaucus, aspergillus fiavus and glaucus, mucor racemosus, 

 and ascophora mucedo which give a bluish or greenish color 

 and heavy odor, rob it of its nutritive constituents and charge 

 it with toxic products. On mouldy hay it is common to find 

 aspergillus candidus, botrytis grisea, torula herbariorum, 



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