446 Veterinary Medicine. 



years without any suspicion on the part of the owner or caretaker 

 of anything amiss. There may be an occasional cough, short, 

 weak, dry, wheezing, perhaps repeated and roused by opening 

 the stable door in cold weather, by leaving the stable for the cold 

 outer air, by rising suddenly in the stall, by being driven on a 

 run for a short distance, by drinking cold water or by eating dusty 

 food. If driven for some distance, or put to draught work (ox) 

 the subject blows more than the others. Sometimes even at rest, 

 breathing is slightly accelerated. Yet the spirits may be as good, 

 the eye as clear and full, the coat as smooth and sleek and the 

 skin as soft and mellow as in health. Some such animals give as 

 much milk, of as rich a quality, or, when put up to fatten, lay on 

 flesh apparently as well as their healthy fellows. In favor- 

 able cases percussion may elicit circumscribed areas of dulness, 

 and wincing or other sign of tenderness, and auscultation may 

 detect crepitation or wheezing over the same points. By covering 

 the nose and mouth with a sac or blanket the breathing is ren- 

 dered more labored and the morbid sounds become clearer and 

 more definite. The use of a stethoscope or phonendoscope may 

 also render them more distinct. The morbid rales are more sig- 

 nificant of tuberculosis if found in a number of isolated and cir- 

 cumscribed spots, with healthy respiratory murmur between, than 

 if simply surrounding a single extended area of flatness as is usual 

 in pneumonia. Much, however, stands in the way of success at 

 this early stage. The heavy muscular and bony mass of the 

 shoulder covers the anterior lobe and partially muffles the auscul- 

 tation sound, while it renders percussion useless. The thick 

 covering of the ribs in fat animals proves a serious barrier to suc- 

 cessful auscultation and percussion. The varying plenitude of 

 the abdominal viscera, and the rumbling, trickling, gurgling, and 

 in the case of the rumen the crepitation of the contents, tend to 

 complicate, obscure or cover up the pulmonary sounds. There 

 is usually no appreciable elevation of temperature, or a slight 

 rise of about one degree takes place at distant and uncertain 

 intervals so as to render it useless for purposes of diagnosis. 



When the disease is more advanced and the pulmonary lesions 

 more extensive, the animals usually appear less thrifty on the 

 same feeding, yet fat animals are habitually killed for food that 

 show quite extensive pulmonary tuberculosis. With loss of 



