CHAPTER XVIII. 



DISEASES OF THE LUSCULAR SYSTEM AND OP 

 THE EXTREMITIES. 



RHEUMATISM. 



It is inflammation of the fascia, or cellular coat of the muscles, and 

 also of the ligaments and synovial membranes of the joints. If a 

 cow has been exposed to unusual cold and wet, particularly after 

 calving, or too soon after recovery from serious illness, she will often, 

 be perceived to droop. She becomes listless, unwilling to move, 

 and by degrees gets off her feed. If urged to move, there is a 

 marked stiffness in her action, at first referable chiefly, or almost 

 entirely, to the spine ; and she walks as if all the articulations of the 

 back and loins had lost their power of motion. She shrinks when 

 pressed on the loins ; and the stiffness gradually spreads to the fore 

 or hind limbs. The farmer calls \i chine fellon ; if it gets a little 

 worse, it acquires the name oi joint fellon, and worse, unless care is 

 taken, it speedily will become. Some of the joints swell ; they are 

 hot and tender ; the animal can scarcely bend them ; and she cannot 

 move without difficulty and evident pain. 



We find rheumatism in cattle chiefly prevalent in a cold, marshy 

 country — in places exposed to the coldest winds — in spring and in 

 autumn, when there is the greatest vicissitude of heat and cold — in 

 animals that have been debiUtated by insufficient diet, and that can- 

 not withstand the influence of sudden changes of temperature — in 

 old cattle particularly, and such as have been worked hard, and then 

 turned out into the cold air, with the perspiration still hanging about 

 them. 



It seems to assume the acute and the chronic form. One animal 

 will labor under considerable fever ; he will scarcely be able to move 

 at all, or when he does, it extorts from him an expression of suffer- 

 ing. Another seems to be gay and w^ell, when the air is warm and 

 dry ; but as soon as the wind shifts, or immediately before it changes, 

 he is uneasy and comparatively helpless. On some portions of a 

 farm, nothing seems to ail the cattle ; on otiiers, lower, moister, or 

 more exposed, the cattle crawl about stiffly and in pain. In some 



