456 Veterinary Medicine. 



SYMPTOMS OF TUBERCULOSIS IN BIRDS. 



In the gallinaceae there may be inappetence, vomiting, diarrhoea, 

 with hurried breathing, sneezing, and the general phenomena of 

 debility, weakness, advancing emaciation and anaemia, the comb 

 and wattles becoming pale and flaccid and the visible mucosae 

 bloodless. The eyes are sunken and lack lustre, the head sinks, 

 the wings and tail droop, and weight is steadily lost. When the 

 bones and joints of the legs and wings are involved the local 

 swellings and distortions are visible indications of the trouble. 



In parrots these local swellings and particularly the horn-cov- 

 ered vegetations on the face and around the beak are characteris- 

 tic. 



Canary. Tuberculosis is common in the canary, contracted, 

 as in the parrot, from man, with whom alone the caged bird 

 comes into dangerous contact. The interchange of the disease 

 between pet birds and their owners would demand the exclusion 

 of such from the rooms of consumptives, and a careful watch for 

 indications of disease of the air passages with marasmus, that the 

 bird may be disposed of before it has become a source of danger. 



DIAGNOSIS OF TUBERCULOSIS. 



It is needless to repeat the various symptoms of tuberculosis ac- 

 cording to its different seats and the degree of its extension in the 

 animal body. In cases in which the indications are slight, 

 greater importance may be given to them through the knowledge 

 of the existence of more advanced or decided cases in the same 

 herd, or the necropsies of animals taken from it. Yet in the 

 average herd it is safely within bounds to say that three-fourths 

 of the affected cattle will escape condemnation if we employ ob- 

 jective symptoms alone. In one herd of seventy head, in which 

 the tuberculin test condemned twenty-four head (being 50 per 

 cent, of the mature animals), I left the examination after 

 slaughter to the veterinarian of the A. J. C. C. who was at the 

 time skeptical as to the value of the tuberculin test. He wrote 

 me afterward of his surprise at finding every one of the twenty- 

 four condemned animals tuberculous, when not one of them had 

 shown symptoms by which he could recognize the disease in life. 

 This is no exceptional case, and may be advanced rather as a 

 typical example of the ordinary infected country herd. 



