FATAL ENZOOTICS OP CALTES 371 



Prognosis is favorable. 



Therapeutics. — The purse suture is the simplest means to 

 obliterate the opening. The opening may also be closed by 

 searing, using a probe pointed iron at white heat. A more 

 persistent eschar may be produced by putting some colopho- 

 nium over the opening before searing it. 



Cauterization with lunar caustic or copper sulphate is also 

 successful in many cases. 



3. — Fatal Enzootics of Calves. 



This designation comprises several diseases differing in 

 causes, symptoms and course. Of these the four principal 

 infectious diseases are : dysentery, septic pleuro-pneumonia 

 of Poels, septicaemia of Jensen, and bacteriamia (hemorrhagic 

 nephritis and cystitis) of Thomassen. 



(a) CALF DYSENTERY. 



Calf dysentery (yellow or white dysentery, dysenteria 

 neonatorum) is an infectious disease attacking the young 

 animal in the first few days after birth, showing usually an 

 acute, frequently fatal, course. 



Etiology. — Already Franck describes this disease as an 

 infectious one, and supposes that a stable miasma must be 

 looked upon as the cause. The fact that some calves are 

 already diseased before they suck suggests that such calves 

 were already infected before birth. 



Nocard showed that dysenteria neonatorum and the infec- 

 tious abortion in all probability are caused by one and the 

 same low organism (see infectious abortion, page 115. 



Besides Franck and Nocard, Friedberger and Frohner 

 also believe in intrauterine infection. The latter are of the 

 opinion that infectious catarrhs of the uterus or vagina are 

 transmitted to the mucosa of the digestive tract of the young. 



Jensen thinks that there is hardly foundation to prove 

 intr-auterine or vaginal infection. Jensen found an oval 

 bacterium in the blood, mesenteric glands, spleen, also in the 



