294 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES. 



SYMPTOMS OF ANTHRAX FEVER IN HORNED CATTLE, APOPLECTIC 

 ANTHRAX, SPLENIC APOPLEXY, SPLENIC FEVER. 



The symptoms in the ox are very analogous to those in the 

 horse. The ox suddenly goes off its feed ; rumination is sus- 

 pended ; there are rigors and tremblings ; partial sweats bedew 

 the body, which is alternately hot and cold. The dorso-lumbar 

 region is excessively tender to pressure, and when it is the seat 

 of the tumour, very acute pain is thus caused ; the gait becomes 

 staggering, and the animal rapidly exhausted. A recumbent 

 posture is almost constantly maintained ; the animal will now 

 and then attempt to rise, but will rarely succeed in doing so. 

 When standing, the back is arched, the legs stiff and rigid, but 

 the standing posture is not long maintained. The animal looks 

 towards its flank, falls into convulsions, and expels, without 

 much effort, soft and bloody matter by the anus. The heart 

 beats with violence against the thoracic walls; the j)ulse is 

 small, rapid, irregular, intermittent, and sometimes double ; the 

 conjunctivae red, injected, and reflect a blackish-red tint ; the 

 respiration is panting and plaintive ; there is tympanitis of the 

 abdomen; the tongue is bluish-red, and the mouth filled with 

 mucus ; blood escapes from the nose ; the eyes are sunk in their 

 orbits, and tears flow over the cheeks. The areolar tissue of the 

 back and sides becomes crepitous to the touch, and the animal 

 dies during a convulsive exacerbation, or during the succeeding 

 calmness. In some animals the excitement is so great that it 

 is dangerous to go near them. The rapidity witli which the 

 symptoms succeed each other is variable, death taking place in 

 the space of from a few minutes to twenty hours. 



In cattle above two years old, particularly milch cows, the 

 local lesions are often confined to great congestion of the spleen, 

 and to a lesser extent of the liver and mucous membrane of the 

 intestinal canal. In other, but rarer instances, the engorgement 

 may be in the lungs, and should the animal survive for some 

 days, decomposition of the extravasated blood is established, as 

 expressed by foetor of the breath ; the decomposed extravasated 

 blood being absorbed into the circulation, causing death by 

 septicaemia. I have also seen this condition in a sucking calf 



In true splenic apoplexy the spleen is often mucli enlarged, 

 broken down in structure, and its capsule distended with a mass 



