General Diseases. 339 



Symptoms. — In acute articular rheumatism, the affected 

 joints are hot, inflamed, painful, and swollen. This con- 

 dition is not unfrequently mistaken for rickets, and when 

 treated as such, it scarcely need be added that great harm 

 is done to the patient. 



The animal moves about with extreme difficulty, uttering, 

 sharp yelping cries, expressive of the torture the movements 

 create. 



Considerable constitutional disturbance is usually mani- 

 fested ; the pulse is rapid and jerking, the respiration in- 

 creased, the breath foetid, and the tongue loaded with fur. 

 Constipation is generally present, and the urine is scanty 

 and turbid. 



As in the human subject, a remarkable feature of the 

 disease is its tendency to move from place to place — a joint 

 suddenly becomes affected, and as suddenly the disease 

 may leave it (or continue there), and appear with the same 

 short notice in another part ; and so it goes on, mystifying 

 those persons unacquainted with the nature of the complaint. 



In lumbago, the animal walks with its back arched, and 

 with a dragging paralytic gait ; pressure or manipulation 

 about the loins causes intense pain, there is great disinclina- 

 tion to move, the bowels are obstinately constipated, and 

 the urine is high coloured, scanty, and turbid* 



water. In two hours the action of the cat's heart became irregular. 

 The next morning the animal was found dead. There was no peri- 

 toneal inflammation, but marked endocarditis in the left chambers of 

 the heart. The mitral valve was inflamed and thickened, and covered 

 on its free borders with firm, fibrinous deposits. The whole inner 

 surface of the ventricle was highly vascular. A dog, on which a 

 similar experiment was tried, died in two days. Unequivocal evidence 

 of endocarditis was disclosed upon examination of the heart. The 

 tricuspid valve was swollen to twice its ordinary size. The aortic 

 valves, inflamed and enlarged, presented fibrinous beads along their 

 edges ; and the entire endocardial surface was red. The pericardium 

 was simply dry. There was, however, ho affection of the joints."— 

 "Watson's Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Physic," 

 vol. ii., p. 810. 

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