478 GrENEKAL DISEASES. 



luiigs. The breathing becomes extremely hurried, often about 75 

 in the minute, with heaving of the flanks. Depression is well 

 marked; and there is an escape, from the bronchial tubes, of 

 watery fluid, which becomes mixed with mucus. The presence of 

 this fluid, even before any discharge takes place from the nostrils, 

 can be readily detected by the bubbling sound which may be heard 

 by applying the ear to the front of the chest. As this fluid accu- 

 mulates more and more in the bronchial tubes, it is discharged from 

 the nostrils, usually in large quantities, and in a somewhat frothy 

 condition, which it soon loses if it be allowed to collect on the 

 ground. The fluid may trickle from the nostrils, or may be dis- 

 charged in streams. Although I have never measured in a fatal 

 case the quantity of this poured-out fluid, I think it would be about 

 three or four pints. " I have caught quantities of this material 

 in glass vessels, when it appears as a straw-coloured fluid, but it 

 is spontaneously coagulable in the presence of minute traces of 

 blood. It is coagulated by heat, and has been found to consist 

 almost entirely of blood plasma" (Ediiigton). "One very charac- 

 teristic symptom is the distension or bulging of the pits above 

 the eyes " {Hutclieon). The froth that is discharged from the 

 nostrils is produced by the plasma which has transuded into 

 the bronchial tubes and air-cells of the lungs, and which is some- 

 what similar in composition to the white of an egg, becoming 

 whipped-up intO' foam by the breathed-in air. To use Edington's 

 happy expression, the animal is practically drowned in its own 

 blood serum. 



The disease runs a fatal course, usually in about four days, taking 

 the period of incubation at about eight days. During the first 

 two days of the attack, there is little to attract casual attention. 

 Vet.-Lieiit. Coley states that the lining membrane of the eyelids has 

 invariably pectinal (comb-like) or stellate (star-shaped) blood spots 

 on it. As a rule, the patient dies very suddenly, frequently 

 within an hour or two of the time he was first seen to be ill. The 

 general idea in South Africa is that the disease runs its course in 

 a couple of hours, or even less; the cause of this mistaken opinion 

 being evidently want of ability to recognise the symptoms until 

 they are of a well marked character. Usually, death, principally 

 from suffocation, comes on suddenly. 



In dikkop, the chief manifestation is an enormous swelling of 

 the head, neck, and lips, Edington remarks that the lips usually 

 swell so much that they fall back and expose the front teeth of 

 the lower jaw. The swelling of the head and neck in dikkop 

 closely resembles that seen in the chest form of anthrax (p. 471). 

 In dikkop there is always more or less congestion of the blood 

 vessels of the lungs ; and in paard-ziekte, more or less transuda- 



