Congenital Infections of Calves 663 



for life. The hairs become matted together in hard masses. 



These evident deviations from typical health can not be 

 classed as dysentery, pneumonia, septicemia, or arthritis, 

 but are due, so far as can now be determined, to the same 

 infections. The results differ because the ratio of bacterial 

 force to the resistance of the patient differs. Such calves 

 finally recover a physiologic appearance at one hundred and 

 twenty to one hundred and eighty days, when they shift 

 more or less completely from a milk to a vegetable diet. 

 The pot-belly or gauntness slowly abates, the feces cease to 

 adhere to the tail and buttocks, the harsh dry coat regains 

 its lustre, the masses of epidermal debris in the hair disap- 

 pear, the animal becomes vigorous and grows rapidly. It 

 then enters upon a period of unusual good health, which ex- 

 tends to puberty, and breeding occurs. The only trace of 

 the adversity through which it has passed is the matting and 

 staining of the vulvar or preputial tuft and the persistence 

 of more or less numerous nodular elevations in the vulvar 

 or preputial mucosa, known as the nodular venereal dis- 

 ease. The significance of the matting of the hairs and of the 

 lesions in the mucosa is not accurately known. I do not be- 

 lieve that during this epoch of apparent good health the ani- 

 mal has become free from the infection. Instead I believe 

 that here and there the infection still lingers, but there has 

 arisen an important power of resistance to the bacteria 

 which holds them in abeyance and renders them essentially 

 saprophytic for the time being. 



The post-mortem findings vary with the form and 

 duration of the disease. In calves which succumb to 

 violent dysentery, the lesions are those of gastroenteri- 

 tis and septicemia. Hemorrhages occur in the capsule 

 of the spleen or the outer and inner walls of the heart 

 beneath the pleura (See Fig. 205) and elsewhere. The 

 fourth stomach shows great reddening (congestion) of its 

 mucosa and the folds are generally edematous. The duode- 

 num shows similar lesions. The remainder of the alimen- 

 tary tract is not so markedly altered, as a rule, although 

 frequently the summits of the rectal folds are intensely con- 

 gested and sometimes hemorrhagic. 



