^^6 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



not last lon^\ I liave seen an animal linger on foiu? or five days, but 

 nsnally the Avhole course of the malady is run in from twenty-four to 

 forty-eiy,]it hours. 



An animal lirst seems to show costiveness, with a dry mucus over 

 the scanty excrement; although apparently undisturbed and even feeding, 

 may be dead in from twelve to twenty-four hours. 



The diagnosis of the disease at an early period of its manifestations is 

 therefore imi)ortant, and it rests on the knowledge of how animals have 

 been treated and fed, (as the simultaneous attack of several animals 

 show,) and especially on the observations of a fact that I have usually 

 traced, that the animals which have eaten most ravenously have been 

 the first and most severely affected. Old cattle may sometimes avoid 

 the smutty food, and young animals eat heartily ; these will be found 

 the first and oulj" ones to die. 



POST-MORTEM APPEARANCES. 



The state of torpor of the alimentary canal of animals affected with 

 this disease is indicated on opening the belly and exposing the stomach 

 to view. In the first, or x^aunch, corn husks and corn are found in a dry 

 condition. Sometimes the rumen is very full, and gas may have become 

 disengaged in it so as to cause a great distension, which is relieved by 

 puncture. The contents of the second stomach, or reticulum, are in the 

 same condition as those of the first, though sometimes mixed with some 

 fluid. The third stomach, manyplies or omasum, is firm, distended, and 

 on being opened the food is found caked between the folds, with marked 

 impressions of the papillte or little eminences which stud the mucous 

 membrane. We find in almost all fevers a similar condition of the third 

 stomach, and indeed in healthy animals it is that part of the digestive 

 organs in which the food is most dry and packed preparatory for solu- 

 tion by the gastric juice and intestinal secretions. But there are other 

 lesions associated with this "caking" of the food in the third stomach, 

 in specific diseases, and its existence without these affords evidence of a 

 primary form of impaction, which has received the most remarkable 

 names, such as " staking," " bound," " fardel-bound," &c. The fourth 

 stomach contains but a scanty quantity of greenish, semi-digested mat- 

 ter, is usually reddened somewhat dittusely, and the redness increases 

 at times toward the opening of the small intestines. 



Tlie intestine, usually replete with somewhat solid and imperfectly 

 digested food, is usually high colored, especially in the fundus of the 

 cjecum, and in the large portion of the colon. The rectum is the seat 

 of ramified redness, and a consistent mucus coats its contents. 



I'ersous have rei)(>rtud a peculiar black color of one lung. This is 

 only due to stagimtion of blood after death, in the organ nearest the 

 ground; and the same kind of stasis or settling of the blood is apt to 

 pervade other tissues and organs in the side on which an animal has 

 been l^ing. 



