122 BOVINE PATHOLOGY. 



whicli they excite. It affects especially narrow-cliested 

 animals with long legs. A young animal or a milch cow 

 (well-bred in most cases) is observed to cough slightly, 

 and the characters of this sign of disorder are rather re- 

 markable ; it is weak and hoarse. It is almost diagnostic. 

 The affected animals are generally " bullers/^ ever ready 

 to take the male, but sterile. Attention having thus been 

 drawn to the animal, it is found that the skin is dry, the 

 coat '' staring.^^ The constitutional conditions, in fact, 

 are those described by human practitioners as hectic. 

 The mucous membranes are pale, and the respiratory 

 murmur is inaudible on auscultation of some parts of the 

 chest. Pain is evinced on percussion of the sides, and 

 on pressure of the loins. The patient is debilitated with 

 a weak, quick pulse, and the bowels respond too easily to 

 the action of laxatives. The milk is bluish, with an 

 unpleasant flavour, and is said to quickly become sour, 

 and to form only bad butter and cheese. Generally, too, 

 the internal temperature is a little above the normal ; 

 appetite capricious. In pregnant animals abortion, in 

 other females irregular oestrum occurs. This state of 

 affairs continues for some time, increasing in severity; 

 the cough becomes hacking, the animal very thin and 

 hidebound, often covered with lice, and the respirations 

 very quick, and death takes place, the patient being 

 carried off by an attack of diarrhoea, leading to anasmia. 



Autopsy reveals deposits in the lungs of a nodular 

 character, aggregated into masses by the lung-tissue and 

 inflammatory deposits, and varying in their characters. 

 The tissue in which they are imbedded is inflamed, and 

 they have pressed on the bronchial tubes, preventing 

 air from passing to and from the air-cells. Each of the 

 nodules is a tubercle, and the compound mass exhibits in 

 different parts caseation and softening, perhaps also cal- 

 cification (also known as cretification). On slitting open the 

 bronchial tubes, we find that many of these softening 

 tubercles have involved their lining membrane, which, 

 therefore, presents ulcers of the true scrofulous character, 

 often confluent, gritty, and irregular on the surface, and of 



