Special report on diseases of the horse / by Drs. Pearson [and others].

Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Special report on diseases of the horse / by Drs. Pearson [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    590/690 (page 508)
    mal will permit, are most useful, but in the majority of cases the stupefied animal is unable to be moved satisfactorily or to have one foot lifted for local treatment, and the only treatment consists in local bleeding above the coronary bands and the application of poultices. During convalescence small doses of alkalines may be kept up for some little time, but the greatest care must be used, while furnishing the animal with plenty of nutritious, easily digestible food, not to over- load the intestinal tract, causing constipation and consequent diarrhea. Special care must be taken for some weeks not to expose the animal to cold. ; SEQUEL.® OF INFLUENZA. Anasarca, or purpura hemorrhagica.—A previous attack of influ- enza is a common predisposing cause of this disease which appears most frequently a few weeks after convalescence is established. It occurs more frequently in those animals which have made a rapid convalescence and are apparently perfectly well than it does in those which have made a slower recovery. Anasarca commences by symptoms which are excessively variable. The local lesions may be confined to a small portion of the animal’s body and the constitutional phenomena be nil. The appearance and gravity of the local lesions may be so unlike, from difference of loca- tion, that they seem to belong to a separate disease, and complications may completely mask the original trouble. In the simplest form the first symptom noticed is a swelling, or sev- eral swellings, occurring on the surface of the body—on the forearm, the leg, the under surface of the belly, or the side of the head. The tumefaction is at first the size of a hen’s egg; not hot, little sensitive, and distinctly circumscribed by a marked line from the surrounding healthy tissue. These tumors gradually extend until they coalesce, and in a few hours we have swelling up of the legs, legs and belly, or the head, to an enormous size; they have always the characteristic con- stricted border, which looks as if it had been tied with a cord. In the nostrils are found small reddish spots, or petechiae, which gradually assume a brownish and frequently a black color. Examination of the mouth will frequently reveal similar lesions on the surface of the tongue, along the lingual gutter, and on the frsenum. If the external swelling has been on the head, the petechise of the mucous membranes are apt to be more numerous and to coalesce into patches of larger size than when the dropsy is confined to the legs. The animal may be rendered stiff by the swelling of the legs, or be annoyed by the awkward swollen head, which at times may be so enormous as to resemble that of a hip- popotamus rather than that of a horse. During this period the tem- perature remains normal; the pulse, if altered at all, is onty a little weaker; the respiration is only hurried if the swelling of the head