Symptom or sequel of other disease, or from traumas, caustics,
neoplasms, peptic ulcers, verminous thrombosis, tubercle. Catarrhal
erosion, peptic, deep, round ulcer, calculi with irregular ulcers,
cord ulcer at mesenteric attachment, small, follicular, grouped
ulcers, sloughing ulcers of infectious diseases, circular projecting,
button like ulcers of hog cholera, microbes. Symptoms: diarrhœa,
black, or red, sloughs, fever, blood stained vomit, manipulation.
Treatment: for foreign body, poison, or infectious disease, careful
diet, antiseptics.
Ulceration of the intestines is commonly a symptom or sequel of other
intestinal disorder, such as intestinal catarrh, impaction, calculus,
foreign body, parasites, petechial fever, influenza, glanders,
rinderpest, Southern cattle fever, hog cholera, pneumoenteritis, rabies,
canine distemper. Then there are ulcers, caused by sharp pointed bodies,
by caustic agents ingested, and by obstructive changes in neoplasms.
Peptic ulcers may occur in the duodenum as in the stomach. Finally local
disturbances of the circulation and especially such as attend on
verminous thrombosis, are at once predisposing and exciting causes of
ulceration. Tuberculosis and other neoplasms are additional causes.
The ulcers may vary in different cases. In catarrh there is usually
superficial desquamation of the epithelium, and erosions rather than
deep ulcers. The peptic ulcer forms on the dependent wall of the gut,
where the gastric secretions settle, and assumes a more or less
perfectly circular outline (round ulcer). Those due to calculus or
impaction, may be irregular patches mostly on the unattached side of the
intestine and resulting from necrosis of the parts most exposed to
pressure. The ulcers resulting from cords stretched along inside the
bowel, are in the form of longitudinal sores on the attached or
mesenteric side of the intestine, where the wall being shorter the cord
continually presses. Follicular ulcerations are usually small, deep
excavations, commonly arranged in groups. Ulcers connected with
neoplasms have an irregular form determined by that of the morbid
growth. In infectious diseases the ulcers are round or irregular,
resulting from circumscribed sloughs. In most of the infectious diseases
the tendency appears to be to attack the intervals between the folds of
the mucosa, probably because the bacteria of ulceration find a safer
lodgement in such places. In the hog cholera ulcers the older ulcers
tend to the circular form with thick mass of necrotic tissue in the form
of plates or scales imbedded in the bottom and projecting above the
adjacent surface of the mucosa. As a rule the microbes which in the
different cases preside over the necrobiosis are found in the depth and
walls of the ulcers.
The _symptoms_ are largely those of the diseases of which the ulcers are
a concomitant or result. There is usually diarrhœa, which is generally
black from extravasated blood, and may be marked by fresher red bloody
striæ. Sloughs of variable size are not at all uncommon in the fæces.
Hyperthermia is usually more intense than in ordinary chronic enteritis,
indicating the action on the heat producing centres of the necrosing
microbes and their toxins. In pigs and dogs there may be vomiting of
dark blood stained material or of feculent matter. In the small animals
it may be possible to feel through the walls of the abdomen the
thickening of the intestine at and around the seat of any extensive
ulcer.
_Treatment._ So far as this is not the treatment of the foreign bodies,
poisons, or specific fevers which cause the ulcers, it consists mainly
in careful dieting and the use of antiseptics such as subcarbonate of
bismuth, salol, salicylic acid, sodium salicylate or naphthol.