DISEASES OF THE RESPIRATORY ORGANS. 8l 



In most cases, a thin pulp, made with mustard and water, 

 should be well rubbed in around the throat as soon as trte 

 bowels respond, and covered up for two hours, but in the most 

 severe this may be preceded for a day or two by a linseed 

 poultice. The diet throughout must be green, soft mashes or 

 roots. 



CROUP. 



Especially seen in young animals (calves, lambs, foals), in 

 cold and damp or high exposed localities. The symptoms are 

 those of severe sore-throat {laryngitis), coming on very suddenly 

 with hard croupy cough and dry wheezing breathing, worse at 

 one time than another or heard only at particular times of the 

 day (morning, night), when spasms of the larynx come on. 

 But the most characteristic symptom is the formation of 

 albuminoid false membranes as white films or pellicles in the 

 throat, and which are discharged in shreds on the second ax 

 third day. Fever runs very high, pulse ninety to one hundied, 

 temperature 107°, and even higher. 



Treatment. — Give a warm, well-aired building, with water- 

 vapour set free in the atmosphere, if possible ; warm clothing, 

 a laxative (sulphate of soda) with antispasmodic (laudanum, 

 aconite, chloral-hydrate, lobelia); follow up with small doses of 

 sulphate of soda, chlorate of potassa, and antispasmodics, 

 giving each dose in well-boiled linseed tea, slippery elm or 

 marsh-mallow. Blister the neck actively (mustard, with or 

 without oil of turpentine), and, if necessary, swab out the 

 throat with a solution of nitrate of silver 10 grs., water i oz., 

 applied by a small sponge immovably tied on a piece of whale- 

 bone. In the worst cases suffocation must be obviated by 

 opening the windpipe in the middle of the neck and inserting 

 a tube to breathe through. In horses a ring must not be com- 

 pletely cut across, but a semicircular piece cut out of each of 

 two adjacent ones. Sometimes stimulants (wine whey, car- 



