540 
REPORTS OF CASES. 
with matter from affected mouths failed to produce anything 
in cattle, sheep and goat. The disease I am about to describe 
hurriedly does not seem contagious, but some unknown in¬ 
fluence acting broadly produced it. 
The symptoms are as follows : The cattle appear gaunt 
and gaunter day after day for want of food. They are more 
or less stiff in locomotion. If examined the nose may be found 
hot, dry, cracked and sometimes wine colored in patches. The 
pad and the lips present at an early date blisters which soon 
form a thick, yellowish, cracked, soft crust. Sometimes the 
tongue is blotched or blistered, but rarely. There is much 
drooling of stringy, watery matter from the mouth, and the 
odor is sometimes anything but agreeable, often very fetid 
indeed. Those yellowish crusts slough out after a few days 
and leave raw surfaces or ulcers. There is rarely a kind of 
smacking of the lips. The blisters are mostly large cracked 
patches across the pad, as though the parts had been scalded. 
They are not circumscribed blebs. 
In a few cases complications arise by which gangrene of 
the gums extends to the jaw bones or teeth, and in exceedingly 
few instances some teeth become loose and even drop off. 
In most of cases, lameness and stiffness becomes severe, 
as in laminitis. In very rare exceptions lesions appeared 
above the hoof in the cleft. Occasionally also, blisters and 
consequent results (crusts and even ulcers) occur on the 
udder. In nine or ten cases these appeared on the neck, the 
abdomen, the back and about the tail. Uncommonly there is 
diarrhoea. The malady runs its regular course in about eight 
days. The shortest course I have noticed was five and the 
longest eleven days. There are irregular or complicated 
cases which last much longer. Fever averages 103° F. The 
type is very mild. 
As treatment astringent washes of the ulcers, laxative 
drugs and administration of food was very successful in 
shortening the course and preventing too much loss of flesh. 
Boracic acid and alum solutions were often used with bene¬ 
fit. Prehension of food usually being impossible, most cattle 
were fed quite beneficially with ears of corn and other solid 
