156 Veterinary Medicine. 



As the disease advances there is encreased dullness and prostra- 

 tion, marked emaciation, and anaemia, sunken eyes, encrusted 

 eyelids, extensive areas of depilation including even the long 

 hairs of the tail, and quite often an abundant bloody diarrhoea. 



The affection may last for 24 to 40 days and under rational 

 treatment the majority survive. There remains, however, in a 

 certain number of cases, a permanent enlargement and fibrous 

 induration from the organization of the exudate. 



Diagnosis. A fully developed case is easily recognized. The 

 fever and constitutional disorder, complicated by petechiae on the 

 mucosae and skin ; the extensive swellings suddenly formed, 

 oozing serum or blood, and tending to fissures and necrosis ; and 

 the discharge of blood from the nose, bowels, kidneys and udder, 

 in the absence of the bacilli of anthrax, emphysematous anthrax, 

 malignant oedema, and wildeseuche ; the slower progress ; the 

 low mortality; the occurrence on a damp, springy, or imperme- 

 able soil, or one known to produce this disease ; and especially if 

 in late summer or autumn, become virtually pathognomonic. 



Prevention. Seclude cattle in late summer and autumn 

 especially, from soils known to be productive of this affection and 

 above all from damp wet clays, underlaid by hard-pan, from 

 swamps, from drying up ponds and basins, from wet river 

 bottoms and deltas and from springy fields generally. Fields of 

 this kind may be reserved for cultivated crops or for raising hay. 

 The fundamental remedy is thorough drainage, and a subsequent 

 abandonment of the laud for a year or two to other crops to allow 

 of a dissipation of the poison. Sudden chills after being heated 

 or fatigued, and exposure in the pasture in cold nights are to be 

 avoided. 



Treatment. The French writers up to the present extol 

 bleeding for the early stages. Its benefit must apparently depend 

 on the diminution of the blood tension allowing the distended 

 capillaries to resume their normal contractility, and in the 

 lessening of the tendency to exosmosis, and the encrease of 

 endosmosis so that much of the poison in the blood is removed 

 and what remains is largely diluted and rendered comparatively 

 harmless. However well this may operate in the strong and 

 plethoric, it cannot be considered as applicable to the weak or 

 anaemic, nor to advanced cases in which the vital powers are 



