Causes: decomposing swill, ferments from snout and feet in swill,
toxins, salt, brine, powdered soaps, etc. Symptoms: dullness,
inappetence, fever, burrowing under litter, stiffness, drooping head,
ears and tail, arched back, tender abdomen, constipation, diarrhœa,
petechiæ, rumbling, tympany, weakness, emaciation, paraplegia, not
actively infectious. Duration: one to eight days or more. Lesions:
mucopurulent exudation in alimentary canal, congestion, extravasation,
hemorrhages, ulcerations, congestion of peritoneum, mesenteric glands
and other organs. Diagnosis: presence of alimentary causes, many
attacked at once, no spread to better kept herds, no germ fatal to
guinea-pigs nor rabbits. Treatment: eliminate, oil, calomel, flaxseed,
gruels, enemata, antiseptics, revulsives, diet during convalescence,
antidotes.
_Causes._ The enteritis of swine has been long considered as infective
or septic, yet this is perhaps mainly due to the nature of the food too
often furnished to this animal in a state of domestication. Not only is
he fed on swill containing all kinds of over-kept food, in a state of
more or less advanced decomposition, but he is kept in a pen or yard
which soon becomes offensive, and following his natural instincts he
roots around with his nose in the accumulating filth. When fed he
plunges this foul snout in his liquid food, and as if this were not
enough the fore feet follow, and if the trough is long enough the hind
feet as well. Every available saprophytic microbe therefore finds its
way down his throat, and the toxins from their growth outside the body
accompany them to irritate or benumb the mucosa and fit it for the
attacks of bacteria, which would otherwise have proved harmless. But in
addition to all this, chemical irritants get into the swill and pave the
way for the microbes. Salt, brine, and the various caustic washing
powders used in washing dishes and tables find their way into the swill
barrel often in quantity sufficient to irritate and poison. In
experiments conducted at the N. Y. State Veterinary College the washing
powders have been proved to be most deadly, and upon different farms, a
mortality attributed to hog cholera, has again and again been arrested
by preventing the entry of these powders into the swill barrel.
_Symptoms._ There is dullness, inappetence, hyperthermia (105°), a
tendency to lie under the litter, leaving the herd, when raised the pig
arches his back, moves stiffly with grunting, the tail and ears pendent,
and the belly tender to the touch. The bowels are at first constipated,
and thirst ardent, later diarrhœa may set in, and the skin and snout may
have red blotches or patches as in hog cholera. Tympanies and abdominal
rumblings are frequent. The animal becomes very dull, weak, emaciated,
staggers in walking or is completely paraplegic.
It may end fatally in twenty-four or forty-eight hours, or death may be
deferred for six or eight days or the disease may merge into the chronic
form, or recover. The usual foul surroundings of the pig and the
abundance of microbes and toxins taken in, serve to make enteritis in
this animal much more redoubtable than in other domestic animals.
The _lesions_ are usually common to stomach and intestine, and consist
in abundant mucopurulent discharge, extensive congestion, points and
extensive patches of blood extravasation, and of lymph infiltration,
ulcers, congested peritoneum and mesenteric glands, and congestions and
ecchymosis in distant organs.
The _diagnosis_ between this affection and hog cholera on the one hand
and swine plague on the other is not always easy, but it occurs in herds
where no introduction of infection can be shown, there is always the
evidence of a foul or unwholesome food, drink or environment, and the
history of a number having been attacked at once and not one by one at
varying intervals, as in infection, the disease does not spread to
neighboring herds kept in better conditions, and there is an absence of
the specific germ of hog cholera, motile, ærobic, non-liquefying,
asporogenous, gas producing with glucose and fatal to guinea-pigs; or of
that of swine plague, non-motile, ærobic, non-liquefying, asporogenous,
not gas producing and not fatal to guinea-pigs, but fatal to rabbits.
_Treatment._ If the bowels are costive give castor oil 2 ounces, with
great care to avoid choking, or shake 15 to 30 grains of calomel on the
tongue and give flaxseed tea, or solution of slippery elm or gum which
the animal will usually drink to slake its thirst. Or well boiled gruels
may be substituted. Injections of soapsuds or Glauber salts with
salicylate of soda should be added until the bowels respond, after which
the salicylate alone may be given by both mouth and anus, or it may be
replaced by one of the other non-poisonous antiseptics. Oil of
turpentine alone or with ammonia may be applied on the abdomen and
covered up until the skin is red and angry.
When appetite returns, gruels, linseed tea, boiled milk and other easily
digested food may be given for some days until the stomach reacquires
tone, when the patient may be slowly returned to its accustomed diet.
If the disease can be traced to alkaline washing powders, these should
be first neutralized by vinegar, after which laudanum, antiseptics and
mucilaginous gruels will be in order.