390 Veterinary Medicine. 



mation iii the spots of mottling, followed by degeneration, and 

 necrosis, the liver cells disappearing under the compression of the 

 giant and round cells and the amoebae, the surface over the affect- 

 ed parts is depressed, and the mottling ma)' show a variety of 

 colors, as brown, brownish red, or yellow, pale yellow, grayish or 

 dirty white. The degenerating tissue may become caseated, but 

 abscess appears to be unknown, though so common in amoebic 

 dysentery of man. In the skin of the head the blackish color 

 predominates ; there is more or less congestion, capillary embo- 

 lism, and tissue degeneration. 



Diagnosis. Th. Smith notes three cases of diseased caecae without 

 great thickening of their walls, and an exudate in the lumen hav- 

 ing the general appearance of that seen in the amoeba disease but 

 with no amoebae, only the bacillus coli communis. The odor was 

 strongly feculent. In all three cases the liver was healthy. In 

 one there was an abundance of tapeworms in the bowels. Mani- 

 festly the absence of liver lesions may be held to indicate the 

 absence of the protozoan disease. VonRatz (Budapest) gives two 

 similar cases, with many nematodes, those in the exudate being 

 8 to 14 mm. long. 



Zurn describes the presence of the diphtheria of fowls in the 

 intestines of hens, turkeys and palmipeds and sometimes confined 

 to the caeca. It is characterized by great prostration and debility, 

 and an offensively smelling diarrhoea at first pultaceous and 

 mucous, later bloody, and followed by constipation, in which case 

 the caeca and rectum are ulcerated and blocked with the yellow 

 croupous exudate, It lasts 2 to 3 weeks or even months, is sub- 

 ject to relapse, and sometimes occurs as a sequel to the diphtheritic 

 affection of the head and throat. The absence of marked thick- 

 ening of the caecal wall, and of the protozoon, the presence of the 

 diphtheritic exudate in the lumen, and the croupous condition or 

 congested appearance of the head and throat are distinctive. Th. 

 Smith, however, refers to two cases, supposed to be of this kind, 

 in which the walls of the caeca were greatly thickened, the result 

 of reparatory inflammation following a slough of the mucosa. 

 Siedamgrotzky also describes thickening of the walls of both caeca 

 in a hen, the mucosa being covered with a thin pseudo-mem- 

 branous exudation, without ulceration. 



It would seem that the caeca of birds, like the vermiform appen- 

 dix of man is very subject to invasion microbes, bacterian and 



