Working oxen most susceptible. Causes, damp buildings, wet, cold,
exposed localities. Debility, overwork, poor feeding, close, foul
stables, sudden changes of temperature. Previous attacks. Symptoms,
mild form, and severe, fever, sneezing, cough, dry, later soft,
prostration, retraction of nostrils, labored breathing, hot breath,
discharge, watery, milky, purulent. Duration, Complications and
sequelæ. Chronic form. Respiratory disturbance, paroxysmal cough,
purulent discharge, mucous and sibilant râles, emaciation. Lesions.
Treatment, laxative safer, expectorant, derivative stimulant, etc., as
in horse. Bronchitis in pigs and sheep.
This is less common than the same disease in the horse, though in
working oxen, in which many of the same causes operate, it is frequently
seen. It is not infrequent in other cattle in damp buildings or in wet
cold exposed situations. Debility from overwork and poor feeding, often
brings on the chronic form of this disease. Living out in damp nights
after a hard day’s work is another frequent cause. The enervating
influence of the hot foul air of many cow houses conduces to it and is
specially injurious if alternated with a chilling atmosphere out of
doors. Previous attacks strongly predispose to future ones.
_Symptoms._ Some cases are so slight as to escape a cursory observation
and subsiding in a few days leave the animal perfectly well. Others are
severe and may prove dangerous.
The earlier symptoms are dullness, staring coat or shivering, and
sneezing, followed by reaction with hot clammy mouth, general increase
of temperature, rapid pulse, reddened nose and eyes, and suspended
rumination. The more characteristic symptoms are a hard, dry, hacking
cough, not so resonant as in the horse, and soon a mucous discharge from
the nose usually cleared away by the tongue almost as rapidly as formed.
If the case increases in severity, and in many cases almost from the
first there is great depression, hanging head, semi-closed watery eyes,
extreme movement of the nostrils, hot expired air, labored action of the
flank, complete loss of appetite, constipation, fæces covered by mucus,
cough very hard, painful, occurring in paroxysms and easily excited by
touching the larynx or trachea. This is followed by a loose cough, a
free discharge from the nose and a mucous râle on auscultation.
Percussion gives healthy resonance. The disease reaches its height on
the fifth day and recovery may be almost perfect on the eighth. Its
chief danger is from a complication with pneumonia or pleurisy, or from
its merging into the _chronic form_.
=Chronic bronchitis in the ox= is characterized by a persistent
disturbance of the respiration, paroxysms of coughing, a white
flocculent discharge from the nose, increasing emaciation, pallor of the
mucous membranes, a mucous râle over the windpipe and median part of the
chest and a cooing sound over other points. If left to itself emaciation
becomes extreme, the skin is harsh, inelastic, attached to the ribs and
covered by vermin, and death usually ensues from diarrhœa or
consumption.
_After death_ the lesions are like those seen in the horse, unless there
is the complication of tuberculous or other disease of the substance of
the lungs.
_Treatment._ Neither the general care nor the remedial treatment differs
materially from that for the horse. The principle difference is in the
lesser liability to superpurgation and in the preference to be given to
Epsom or glauber salts over aloes as a laxative. Either saline may be
given in dose of one pound combined with an ounce of ginger or other
stimulants, and followed up by similar diuretics, expectorants and
tonics, as in the horse. The _chronic form_ is to be treated as in the
horse.
=Pigs and sheep= affected with =bronchitis= must be treated on the same
general principles as the ox, only giving one-fifth the amount of the
different medicaments, and in the case of the pig oleaginous purgatives
and emetics as advised for the dog.