6o Veterinary Medicine. 



scribed inflammation is at first productive of no fever, and it is 

 only when it gains a certain extent that the nerves and nutrition 

 are disordered so as to bring about a feverish condition. 



Premonitory Symptoms. These usually last but a few hours 

 and are often entirely absent or unnoticed. There is a lack of 

 the customary vigor and spirit, an indisposition to exertion, a loss 

 of clearness and vivacity of the eye, a manifest dullness, with 

 hanging of the head, and frequent shifting of the limbs as if 

 fatigued. Appetite is less sharp and ruminants chew the cud less 

 heartily or persistently. 



Cold Stage. These are soon succeeded by the chill, rigor, or 

 shivering fit, in which the hair, especially that along the back, 

 stands erect (staring coat), the skiu is cold and adherent to the 

 structures beneath (hidebound), the extremities (legs, tail, ears, 

 horns, nose) are cold, and the frame is agitated with slight tremors, 

 or even a shivering so violent that a wooden floor or building is 

 made to rattle. The back is arched, the legs brought nearer 

 together (crouching), the mouth is cool and clammy, the breath- 

 ing hurried, the pulse weak, and it may be rapid, but with a hard 

 beat, the bowels costive, and the urine higher colored than 

 natural. The temperature of the interior of the body, taken by 

 a thermometer in the rectum, is already found above the normal, 

 the excessive destruction of tissue having begun, and the blood 

 driven from the cooler surface, and accumulating in the hot in- 

 terior, at once favors tissue-change and maintains the extra heat 

 thereby produced. In cattle the end of the tail is soft and flaccid 

 from this stage onward. The cold stage lasts a few minutes, or 

 one or two days in different cases. 



Hot Stage. The hot stage appears as a reaction from the chill, 

 the contraction in the minute vessels of the skin giving place to 

 , dilatation, so that tbe whole surface, including the extremities, 

 becomes hot and burning, but still dry and parched. The burn- 

 ing is especially noticeable in the more vascular parts, like the 

 roots of the horns and ears, the muzzle or snout, the mouth, the 

 hoofs, the bare parts of the paws in carnivora, and the mammse 

 (udder) in milch animals. The mucous membranes lining the 

 nose and mouth become hot and red, the breathing freer, but not 

 less rapid, the pulse softer but accelerated, appetite (and rumina- 

 tion) greatly impaired or lost, thirst great, costiveness increase^. 



