148 BOVINE PATHOLOGY. 



pression. It is of a most highly infectious and contagious 

 character, affects also deer and sheep, and generally gives 

 rise to a very great fatality, estimated at 90 per cent. 

 An attack here proves fatal about the seventh day after 

 the first manifestation of signs of the disorder. Its period 

 of incubation varies somewhat considerably, in some cases 

 being supposed to extend to the fourteenth day but gene- 

 rally it lasts from four to eight days. The first indication 

 of disorder is a rise in internal temperature, which occurs 

 twenty-four to twenty-eight hours before any other ap- 

 preciable symptoms; then the animal exhibits evident 

 signs of disorder, extreme dulness, rapid loss of strength, 

 irregular rumination and feeding, and diminished supply of 

 milk, also generally a certain amount of constipation is pre- 

 sent, the coat stares, and there is a persistent shivering. 

 Later the visible mucous membranes assume a pink and 

 then a dark purple colour, most perceptible at the vulva. 

 Twitchings of the voluntary muscles take place, and there 

 is a husky cough, which Professor Simonds describes as 

 " like that of a broken-winded horse with sore throat.^^ 

 The ;pulse at first is scarcely affected, later it becomes 

 frequent and full, and afterwards loses tone, becomes 

 feeble, thready, and double, and towards the last is im- 

 perceptible, and the beats of the heart are irregular and 

 feeble. The breathing, at first not materially altered, 

 afterwards is frequent, complicated by the muscular 

 twitchings, so that it presents a double expiratory move- 

 ment, and at each expulsion of the air the animal moans. 

 The breath is fetid. The temperature of the surface is 

 variable, but the diffusion of heat throughout the system 

 is very irregular, and as the debility of the patient and 

 the weakness of the heart's action increases, extreme cold- 

 ness of those parts distant from the centre of circulation 

 sets in. The nervous system is in a very disordered 

 state ; sometimes the animal is delirious in the early 

 stage, while in the later there is extreme debility, so 

 that the recumbent position is persistently maintained. 

 Abdominal pains are present, marked by the usual signs, 

 and diarrhoea early supervenes, the evacuations being 



