CATTLE. 



— the pupil of the eye becomes dilated — an offensive secretion pro- 

 ceeds from the lids, and the animal is evidently becoming blind — the 

 prostration of strength still goes on — the beast falls — he perhaps 

 rises again for a little while — and then falls and dies. 



The disease is sometimes rapid in its progress, and the animal is 

 destroyed in twenty-four or eight-and-forty hours after the first 

 attack. This is particularly the case with young cattle, and those 

 that are in good condition. At other times, the beast lingers on six 

 or seven days. 



On examination after death, the lungs are gorged and black with 

 blood ; they are softened, and easily torn ; they, however, contain 

 some spots of hepatization, or condensed substances, and often 

 abscesses filled with pus. In man}^ parts gangrene has begun, and 

 chiefly about the anterior portion of the lung. The pleura, the peri- 

 cardium, and the diaphragm are black, thickened, and disposed to 

 gangrene. Traces of inflammation are found in the abdomen, but 

 not of so intense a character. The rumen is filled with dry food ; 

 the contents of the manyplus are so hardened that they may be 

 broken and reduced to powder ; the fourth stomach is more or less 

 inflamed ; the liver is enlarged, and of a yellow color, and the bile is 

 thickened. 



It is evidently inflammation of the lungs, associated, more or less, 

 with that typhoid form of disease to which cattle are so subject. 

 Solitary cases of it are seen ; but it often appears as a kind of epi- 

 demic. It used to be called ganyrenoiis inflammation of the lungs, 

 from the supposed gangrenous state in which the lungs were found ; 

 but these appearances are produced more by congestion, and indicate 

 the violence with which the blood has been driven through the vessels 

 of the air-cells, and by which those vessels have been ruptured, and 

 the cells filled with blood. The blood, once effused, soon coagulates 

 in the cells, and gives that black, softened, pulpy kind of appearance 

 which the cow-leech and the herdsman used to think was proof posi- 

 tive of rottenness. It is true that this effused blood soon begins to be 

 decomposed, and the fetid smell of corruption ensues ; but this is 

 very diflei ent from gangrene of a living part. These congested lungs 

 show that the inflammation was of the intensest character, and had 

 not been long in destroying the animal. 



A contagious character of the disease is far from being established. 

 No other variety of pneumonia with which we are acquainted is con- 

 taoious, at least under ordinary circumstances ; yet the farmer should 

 take the most prudent course, and avoid, as much as he can, the 

 possibility of contagion. 



Few years pass in which this acute pneumonia does not visit some 

 districts. The symptoms vary, but it is decidedly a disease of the 

 respii'atory system primarily, and the danger depends on the intensity 

 of the inflammatory action in the early stage, and the degree in 



