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 indi.sposition 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 skin 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 togeth- 

 er (crouching), the mouth is cool and clammy, the breathing hur- 

 ried, 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 thermo- 

 meter in the rectum, is already found above the normal, the ex- 

 cessive destruction of tissue having begun, and the blood driven 

 from the cooler surface, and accumulating in the hot interior, 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 the 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 mammae 

 (udder) in suckling 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 increased. 



