90 The Farmer's Veterinary Adviser. 



Symptoms. Incubation lasts about two days until the 

 temperature of the body is elevated, or four days until the ap- 

 pearance of outward signs of illness. By this time the 

 inouth, inside the lips, on the dental pad of the upper jaw, 

 or around the gums of the lower front teeth, shows minute 

 white elevations, like the aphtha of the mouths of children, 

 calves, and lambs suffering from thrush (inuguet). This may 

 be exceedingly slight and transient, but is most characteristic. 

 The other mucous membranes, (eye, vulva, rectum, nose) 

 show a more or less dark flush, and concretions may ap- 

 pear around these and on other parts of the skin, especially 

 the teats. These are solid aggregations of epithelial cells, 

 not vesicles nor pustules. In twenty-four hours they undergo 

 fatty softening and are easily detached, leaving small pink 

 ei'osions, and by the sixth day a great part of the mouth and 

 muzzle may have become raw, and the surrounding mucous 

 membrane of a deep red. About the fourth day the skin feels 

 greasy, and dullness and impaired appetite and rumination 

 appear. In cows the milk is diminished, is richer in cream, 

 and even slightly coagulable. Urine becomes scanty and of 

 a high color and density. These signs increase until the 

 sixth day, when the mouth is often raw, saliva drivels, appe- 

 tite and rumination gone, bowels relaxed, the dung passed 

 with much straining and pain, the everted gut appearing of 

 a deep red or port- wine hue, the ears are drawn back, head 

 pendent, eyes half-closed and watery, back arched and often 

 insensible to pinching, abdominal muscles tense and resist- 

 ant, and there is a peculiar check in the act of expiration, 

 the breath being suddenly arrested with a flapping sound 

 and concussion of the entire body, to be exhaled a second or 

 two later with a grunting noise. Sighing and whistling 

 sounds are heard in the chest and it becomes unnaturally 

 drum-like to percussion. A sudden lowering of temperature 

 is usually the precursor of death, which happens on the 

 seventh or eighth day. 



