356 Veterinary Medicine. 



pasture poor and watery, and the cercaria abundant, the symp- 

 toms may appear in from four to six weeks after invasion b}^ the 

 distoma, and death may follow in a few weeks more, while under 

 the opposite conditions of few flukes, rich, dry, wholesome pastu- 

 rage, supplemented by grain, the flukes ma}' remain for six 

 months in the liver before they give rise to symptoms of illness 

 (Simonds) and the attack may result in recovery. 



Complications . of various kinds may hasten death. Thus 

 Gerlach saw cerebral apoplexy occur in the early stages. Bovicini 

 has seen acute hepatitis kill in seven days, and verminous af- 

 fections of the lungs, intestines or brain, scabies and other dis- 

 orders are liable to take occasion to attack the weak and debilitated 

 system . 



A spontaneous recovery is likely to occur in early summer 

 owing to the passing away of the flukes that have wintered in 

 the gall ducts, but convalescence is usually but partial and the 

 sheep do not thrive as before. A fatal result is usually heralded 

 by the encrease of the dropsy, the weak indistinct pulse, the utter 

 refusal of food and the recumbent semi-comatose condition in 

 which the animal passes most of its time. 



Lesions. Morbid Anatomy. In the early stage when the 

 young flukes are migrating into the liver, there is more or less 

 enlargement and congestion of that organ, with .small centres of 

 blood extravasation into its substance, and surface perforations, 

 as large as pinheads from which a bloody serosity oozes on pres- 

 sure. The bile and peritoneal fluid are tinged with red and may 

 contain embryo flukes. L,ater the liver is decidedly enlarged, 

 more particularly the left lobe, and covered with fibrous exudates, 

 which may bind it to adjacent organs and in which young flukes 

 \ inch in length may be found. The same may be found in the 

 gall ducts and gall bladder. The parenchyma is softened, granu. 

 lar and fatty, and yet the interstitial connective tissue may be 

 thickened. This thickening is especially noticeable around the 

 gall ducts, the walls of which are congested, ecchymosed, and 

 denuded of their epithelium by a catarrhal inflamn,iation. Ema- 

 ciation is already shown in the ab.sence of sub-cutaneous and 

 interstitial fat, and the soft aqueous character of the adipo.se ma- 

 terial, in the atrophy, pallor and flaccidity of the mu.scles, in 

 the presence of dropsical exudates into the connective tissue and 

 serous cavities, and in the absence of any firm rigor mortis. 



