Prevalence in different genera. Causes, as in tympany and impaction,
irritants, specific fevers. Symptoms: impaired rumination, tympanies,
impactions, depraved appetite, fever, nervous disorders. Lesions:
hyperæmia, petechiæ, exudates, ulcers, desquamation, swollen or
shrunken papillæ. Treatment: remove cause, mucilaginous food, or
gruels, sodium sulphate, or chloride, bismuth, bitters, mustard
cataplasm, electricity.
This is not a prevalent disease but affects animals at all periods of
life and is a cause of tardy and difficult digestion and rumination. It
usually shows itself as a catarrhal inflammation and by favoring
fermentation in the food, and torpor of the muscular walls of the organ
contributes to tympany and impaction. It is more common in the ox than
in the sheep owing, perhaps, to the more habitual overloading of the
stomach and to the hurried, careless manner of feeding. In the goat it
is rare.
_Causes._ Among the causes may be named tympany and overloading, so that
all the dietary faults that lead to these may be set down as causes of
inflammation. Irritants taken with the food, whether in the form of
acrid plants (ranunculaceæ, euphorbiaceæ, etc.), musty fodder, irritant
products in spoiled fodder, aliments which are swallowed while very hot
or in a frozen state, and foreign bodies of an irritating kind are
especially liable to induce it. Congestions of the paunch are not
uncommon in specific infectious diseases like Rinderpest, malignant
catarrh, anthrax, and Texas fever, and specific eruptions sometimes
appear in aphthous fever and sheeppox.
_Symptoms._ Rumination is slow and irregular, appetite capricious,
tympanies appear after each feed, and there is a marked tendency to
aggregation of the ingesta in solid masses, which resist the
disintegration and floating which is necessary to rumination, and favor
the occurrence of putrid fermentation. There is usually a tendency to
lick earth, lime from the walls, and the manger, and a depraved appetite
shown in a desire to chew and swallow foreign bodies of many kinds.
Vomiting or convulsive rejection of the contents of the rumen is not
unknown (Vives, Pattaes). There is slight fever with heat of the horns
and ears, dry muzzle, and tenderness to pressure on the left flank. The
bowels may be alternately relaxed and confined, and bad cases may end in
a fatal diarrhœa. In other cases the disease may become acute and
develop nervous symptoms, as in tympany and impaction. When the disease
takes a favorable turn, under a careful ration, recovery may be complete
in eight or ten days.
_Lesions._ These are violet or brownish patches of hyperæmia on the
mucosa of the rumen, circumscribed ecchymoses, exudates in the sense of
false membranes and even pin’s head ulcerations. On the affected
portions the mucosa is swollen, puffy, dull and covered with mucus, and
epithelium may desquamate. The papillæ are often red, and thickened or
shrunken and shortened. In the specific affections like aphthous fever
and sheeppox the lesions are rounded vesicles containing liquid. The
ingesta is more or less packed in masses.
_Treatment._ If irritant foreign bodies have been taken rumenotomy is
demanded. If caustic alkalies, acetic or other mild acid. If acids, lime
water or magnesia. Feed well boiled flax seed, or farina gruels, and
wheat bran or middlings in limited quantity. Solids may be at first
withheld, coarse or indigestible food must be. It may be necessary to
rouse the organ by 10 or 12 ozs. of sulphate of soda with a little
common salt and abundance of thin gruels as drink. As a tonic the animal
may take nitrate of bismuth ½ oz., powdered gentian ½ oz., and nux
vomica 20 grains, twice a day. The application of a mustard pulp or of
oil of turpentine on the left side of the abdomen may also be resorted
to. A weak current of electricity through the region of the paunch for
twenty minutes daily is often of great service.