Mostly in cattle from over feeding, dry feeding, inactivity. Small.
Multiple. Round, angular, lobulated. Nucleus. Composition. Dilated
ducts. Atrophied or sclerosed glandular tissue. Prevention: succulent
food, water at will, open air life, correction of local catarrh.
Pancreatic like biliary calculi have been found especially in cattle.
They appear to be predisposed by their stimulating, forcing feeding, by
their quiet life apart from all causes of excitement and especially by
the combined effect of dry feeding and prolonged confinement in the
stall through the long winter.
The calculi are usually small but numerous, Jungers having found 36
weighing 38 grammes. Bär has found a mass with an aggregate weight of 23
grammes.
The form of the calculus varies; many are angular from mutual attrition
in the large ducts; others from the smaller ducts are rounded; those
from the glandular follicles may be even lobulated, in keeping with the
divisions of the cavity. The color is white and each shows a distinct
central nucleus of epithelial, mucus, or other origin. Their specific
gravity is 2.397 (Fürstenberg), and their composition 92 per cent.
calcium carbonate, 4 per cent. magnesia, and traces of calcium phosphate
(Gurlt).
The pancreatic ducts are as a rule greatly dilated and thickened (in man
they form enormous cysts, Senn, Osler), and the glandular tissue is
atrophied, indurated (sclerosed), and of a brownish yellow color.
_Treatment_ of such cases would be unsatisfactory. By way of prevention
succulent food, abundance of pure water, and the correction of any
infective catarrhal affection of the duodenum, or of the bile or
pancreatic ducts would be specially indicated. Free exercise in the open
air would be desirable.