In _Solipeds_: in infectious diseases, pyæmia, embolism. Symptoms: of
primary disease or ill health. Involving other organs. In _cattle_:
foreign bodies from reticulum, distomata, embolism, microbes.
Enlargement: involving other organs: seen in left hypochondrium,
fever, albuminuria. Treatment: aspiration, antiseptic injections,
internal antiseptics.
=Soliped.= Abscess of the spleen in this animal is unusual and has only
been discovered post mortem. It has been found as the result of the
local colonization of pyogenic microbes, in connection with strangles,
contagious pneumonia and other infectious diseases and can then often be
traced to an infected embolus in the splenic blood vessels. The peculiar
vascular structure of the spleen is very conducive to abscess as it is
to infarction, as has been already noticed and hence this complication
of a pre-existing infection in another part is a natural pathological
sequence. Symptoms are rather the general ones of a rigor followed by
hyperthermia than any diagnostic ones of splenic disease. Bourges found
a splenic abscess in a cachectic, melanic mule but no definite splenic
symptom was observed even on rectal examination. Nottel found an abscess
as large as an infant’s head, in the base of the spleen, closely
adherent by its sac to the left kidney and containing a floating mass of
splenic tissue as large as the closed fist. Rutherford found a neoplasm
connecting the great curvature of the stomach, to the diaphragm, and
hollowed out into a series of pus cavities. Fetzner and Cadeac report
cases of extensive abscesses in the head of the spleen and intimately
connected to both stomach and diaphragm. Hahn found abscesses in
connection with the penetration of the spleen by foreign bodies. In
other cases the substance of the spleen was studded with abscesses
varying in size from a pea upward and containing necrotic tissue or
adjoining such dead tissue.
=Ruminants.= In cattle the penetration of the spleen by sharp pointed
bodies coming from the reticulum appears to be the most common cause of
abscess. Other cases depend on the penetration of distomata carrying the
pyogenic microbes, and still others are due, as in the horse, to local
infection with embolism. External traumatisms are unusual causes. There
is usually considerable enlargement of the spleen as a whole, rounded
swellings indicating the seat of the abscess, and adhesions to
surrounding parts, such as the rumen, the left kidney or the diaphragm.
When the abscess is chronic, there is emaciation, unusual flatness on
percussion of the left hypochondrium, and, at times, of the flank,
swelling and tenderness of the flank, above all, according to Imminger,
a persistent elevation of temperature (104° to 106° F.), which is not
lowered by antithermics, and albuminuria. In cattle it is sometimes
possible to diagnose the disease, and if the abscess can be definitely
located, aspiration and antiseptic injections into the sac would be
indicated, conjoined with calcium sulphide, or sodium sulphite
internally.