158 THE FARM DOCTOR. 



various mechanical obstructions (calculi, impactions, invagina- 

 tions, hernia). Cattle, sheep, and swine especially suffer during 

 the vicissitudes and extremes of spring, summer, and autumn, 

 and the latter from want of water to drink and wallow in. 

 Among dogs the young suffer most and those kept on animal 

 food, or that bathe in rivers when heated with the chase. 

 Chickens contract it from faults in feeding and watering, but 

 especially from exclusive feeding on grain and deficiency or 

 impurity of the water. 



Symptoms. — In the mildest forms are fever, increased tem- 

 perature, thirst, scanty, high-coloured urine, costive bowels, the 

 small masses of dung covered with a film of mucus, tender 

 belly, small, quick, hard pulse, yellowish-red eyes, hot clammy 

 mouth, furred tongue with redness along the edges, tip, and 

 lower surface, impaired appetite, dull, sluggish habit, loss of 

 flesh, unthrifty skin, and slight colics after meals. 



In the more severe forms all these symptoms are increased 

 in severity, appetite gone, dulness and depression extreme, head 

 carried low, gait unsteady, breathing excited, a ridge on the 

 tender abdomen as in pleurisy, and more frequent colic, with 

 pawing, uneasy shifting of the limbs, kicking at the abdomen, 

 looking at the flanks, and lying down and rising. Diarrhce^ 

 may set in and herald recovery, or it may become profuse, 

 bloody, and fatal. 



In addition to these general symptoms, cattle and sheep have 

 impairment or loss of rumination, frequent belching of gas, 

 foetid breath, and tenderness mainly of the right side of the 

 abdomen. When due to acrid and irritant plants, the back is 

 arched, abdomen tense and tucked up, constipation obstinate, 

 tongue often purple, and the urine high-coloured or even bloody. 

 It may prove fatal after a fortnight's sickness. In swine 

 the affection is usually mistaken for Intestinal Fever, which 

 indeed it strongly resembles, but without the ineffaceable black 

 spots on the skin and mucous membranes, and without a con- 



