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- 
lensed, the breath foetid, and the tongue loaded with fur. 
“Constipation is generally present, and the urine is scanty 
cand 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 
‘en 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 pencardiins 
‘was simply dry. There was, however, no affection of the joints.”— 
“Watson’s Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Physic,” 
vol. ii., p. 810. 
