I g6 Veterinary Medicine. 



specific bacterium. The mucous surface is brownish or blackish, 

 and epithelial degeneration and desquamation with abrasions are 

 not uncommon especially on the summits of the duodenal folds 

 and villi. Croupous exudates and swelling or ulceration of the 

 follicles are met with. The lymph glands at the base of the 

 caecum are often enlarged and congested. The crop is full of 

 watery, pulpy, frothy or slimy contents, and its mucosa and that 

 of the pharynx may be deeply congested. 



Elsewhere the lesions suggest rather the action of destructive 

 toxins and the profound changes in the blood. Pericardium and 

 endocardium are usually studded with dark petechiae, and con- 

 gestion and even slight exudation may be present. The spleen 

 is enlarged, soft, and gorged with blood. The liver is swollen, 

 congested, extremely friable, and mottled, grayish white from 

 degenerations. The kidneys are dark red, and friable. The 

 lungs may show slight hyperaemist only, or a blood engorge- 

 ment and consolidation, and are then easily reduced to a dark red 

 pulp. Friedberger and Frohner say that respiratory changes are 

 most frequent in land birds ; and intestinal and cardiac in water 

 fowl. 



The blood is diffluent coagulating loosely if at all, of a brownish 

 red color, reddening slowly and imperfectly in contact with air, 

 and like the tissues contains an abundance of the characteristic 

 bacterium staining deeply at the poles and clear in the center. 



In birds that survive a few days there are marked ansemia and 

 emaciation, and the muscular system is of a grayish red color, with 

 fatty degeneration. In acute and fulminant cases on the other 

 hand the muscles may be full and of the normal red color. 



In arthritic cases the congestion and thickening of the soft 

 tissues, and the excess of synovia, are supplemented by destruc- 

 tion of the articular cartilage and by areas of bone abrasion. In 

 the more tardy cases collections of caseous matter are found. 



Diagnosis. This is based on the demonstrably highly conta- 

 gious character of the disease, its rapid spread in a flock, and 

 from the first to nearby adjoining flocks in summer, the short 

 period of incubation, the constancy and nature of the diarrhoea, 

 the speedy and great mortality, and the hemorrhagic lesions of 

 comb, bowels, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen, and serous 

 membranes. The demonstration of the bacterium in the blood 



