MIDLAND COUNTIES VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 77 3 
thoracic cavity. Auscultation gives evidence of consolidate A of 
some portion of one or both lungs, or else we only hear the 
inspiratory and not the expiratory murmur with exceedingly loud 
bronchial and vesicular sounds, over other parts of the chest. 
It is not however my intention to weary you with a long and 
minute detail of symptoms with which I presume we are all familiar, 
but rather to describe the various thermometrical changes that I 
have observed during the progress of the malady. If ever an 
opportunity so occurs that you could examine an animal seven days 
before it developes the ordinary signs of epizootic pleuro-pneumonia 
you will find if the animal is at pasture that the thermometer placed 
in the vagina will indicate 103 or 104° Fahr. At this time also the 
animal will show signs of restlessness ; it will sometimes bellow a 
good deal, which effort will generally end with a fit of coughing ; 
its coat will be extra glossy ; indeed the animal will appear to 
be in an excited and almost superhealthy condition. But if all 
these symptoms are taken into consideration with a knowledge 
of what is to follow, we shall see that they are indications of a 
systemic incrementation of animal heat or inflammatory fever which 
is choosing the thoracic cavity for its particular ravages. If the 
thermometrical examinations are made on the day we are first 
ordinarily called to these cases we shall most likely find the reading 
about 104 or 105° Fahr., varying according to the severity of the 
attack, or the stage in which we observe it, or the age of the 
animal, or whether kept in or out of doors, or during winter or 
summer season. From this date to the full incrementation or 
development of the malady, known by the more or less extensive 
exudation, hepatization, and consolidisation of lung tissue before 
the vital energies begin to fail, or in those cases which recover or 
have the disease mildly, the point round which they take a favorable 
turn, we find the temperature daily increasing until it has reached 
107 or 108° Fahr. per vaginam or even 109° per rectum, and allow 
me here to remark that I have often observed 107° Fahr. per vaginam 
to the point marking the fatal increment; seldom, however, doanimals 
recover after a temperature of that magnitude has been attained. 
In the sporadic forms of pleuro-pneumonia, in gastro-bronchitis 
that distressing disease of cattle brought on by eating after grasses, 
in pneumonia, bronchitis, pleurisy, gastritis, gastro-enteritis and 
other allied diseases, for some of which contagious pleuro-pneumonia 
has often been mistaken, notwithstanding the temperature of the 
organs affected is without doubt greater, I have always failed to 
find the systemic or constitutional heat more than 104 or 105° Fahr. 
per vaginam. It is therefore comparatively easy when viewing any of 
the above-mentioned cases, no matter what distressing symptoms 
may be present if the systemic temperature does not exceed 105® 
Fahr., to decide that it is not contagious pleuro-pneumonia we are 
dealing with. As soon as a decrease of temperature is perceivable 
we may presume the period of incrementation has passed, the specific 
poison has leavened the whole system, no more remains to be con- 
taminated ; there is a pause, a rest from such great vital activity. 
XLIII. 51 
