314 Veterinary Medicine. 



Symptoms. These are of all degrees of severity from the. fre- 

 quent pulpy evacuations of animals fed exclusively on roots, 

 (beets, turnips, potatoes), to the excessive and almost constant 

 discharge of a dark colored liquid mingled with more or less 

 mucus. The discharge may be of a light color and foetid, indi- 

 cating deficiency of bile, or of a dark yellowish brown and odor- 

 less. 



Slight diarrhoea does not affect the appetite nor general health, 

 nor check improvement in condition. In the more severe and 

 continued forms there is loud rumbling in the abdomen, loss of 

 appetite and condition, a rapid small pulse, accelerated breathing, 

 pallid mucous membranes, sunken glassy eye, and increasing de- 

 bility even to an unsteady gait. Distension of the abdomen with 

 pawing and other indications of abdominal pain may appear in 

 bad cases. In the milder cases due to simple irritation and con- 

 gestion there is no tenesmus, no excess of mucus, no formation 

 of bubbles or froth in the stools, as occurs in active intestinal 

 fermentation and dysentery. In symptomatic cases on the other 

 hand there are superadded the marked symptoms of intestinal 

 inflammation, or fermentation, and the faeces become putrid and 

 offensive, which they do also in the different infectious diseases 

 (influenza, contagious pneumonia, rinderpest, lung plague, hog 

 cholera, swine plague, canine distemper, fowl cholera), when 

 the toxins and waste matters of the food and decomposing tissues 

 are being thrown off by the bowels. 



Diarrhoea may be complicated with other diseases and especially 

 in the horse with laminitis. 



In mild cases it tends to a spontaneous recovery, and is followed 

 by some slight costiveness, and if this should prove extreme 

 there may be some danger of complicating sequelae such as in- 

 digestion, enteritis, pneumonia or laminitis. 



Treatment. The first consideration for the practitioner is to 

 discover if possible the immediate cause of the diarrhoea. If this 

 is found to reside in some infectious or other disease aside from 

 the bowel, the attention must be directed to that even more than 

 to the diarrhoea. If it depends on an overdose of some purgative 

 agent or of acrid purgative plants taken with the food, any further 

 laxative is to be avoided, and yet astringents and other agents 

 which tend to lock up the offending material in the alimentary 



