Handbook on contagious and infectious diseases in animals / issued by the Quartermaster General's Branch, General Headquarters, India.
- Date:
- [1944?]
Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Credit: Handbook on contagious and infectious diseases in animals / issued by the Quartermaster General's Branch, General Headquarters, India. Source: Wellcome Collection.
50/314 page 44
![ACTINOMYCOSIS. (Wooden tongue, Lunvpy jaw.) Nature.—This is a specific disease afiecting several species of animals, particularly cattle and ‘man, due to a vegetable parasite commonly known as the ‘‘ ray fungus ’’, and characterized by the formation of tumours with suppurating toci, usually in the tongue, face, jaw, or skin and subcutaneous tissue about the head and neck. Horses are extremely rarely attected. Bacteriology and infection.—The micro-organism responsible for the disease is the Streptothrix bovis or actinomyces bovis, a bacterium which has the power of branching in its growth. It is pleomorphic, existing in colonies, in which it grows in three forms, viz., filaments, cocel, and clubs. Ifa drop of pus or scraping from a lesion is spread on a slide and examined, small granules visible tc the naked eye are observed. It these are crushed under a cover glass and examined under a low power of the microscope, they will be found to consist of a number of club-shaped bodies arranged in the form of a ray with the thick end of the club outwards. This form is considered to be a late stage of development of the organism. If a scraping or section from a growth at a younger stage is examined under staining, a network of very fine filaments is observed. These filaments constitute the active fungus. From the network branches shoot out, their growth appears to become arrested at their distal extremity, the sheath or covering of the filament at that part undergoes a mucilaginous degeneration, and clubs are thus produced; at the sams time the protoplasm of the filaments in the network breaks up into eoccoid bodies For ordinary diagnostic purposes staining is not necessary; colonies - are easily detected under a low power; but “for study of the parasite in its different forms, especially in sections, staining by carbolfuchsin (Ziech] Neilson Solution) and picric acid is recommended, the fungus staining red and the tissue yellow. The disease generally occurs in isolated cases, and is not contagious in the usual acceptation of the term. When s several arumals are affected, it is usually from a common source, and not from one animal to another. It appears to be more prevalent in swampy districts. The earliar view that the causal agent of actinomycosis is a saprophyte which gains access to the body from without, chiefly through barley, has been discredited since it became Inown that the actinomycotic organisms frequently present in the air passages of cereal plants are non-patho- genic, and consequently cannot originate actinomycosis. Symptoms and Diagnosis. » depend on the seat of inoculation. It the tongue is affected, raised connie which are firm and hard to the touch, are at first formed. Extending inwards from these there is marked proliferation of fibrous connective tissue, an indurated glossitis being set up, the tongue protruding from the mouth, and becoming as hard as a board, hence the term — tongue’. There is frequently 4A.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32173519_0050.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
