Definition. Causes, parasitic and microbian. Symptoms. Treatment.
_Definition._ A progressive anæmia in ruminants and other animals,
resulting in general anasarca, and dropsies of the internal cavities.
In veterinary works published on the European Continent this affection
is given a special place apart from the same train of symptoms which
mark distomatosis, taeniasis, and strongyliasis. The disease is
described as prevailing in wet years, after inundations, when the
vegetation is rank and aqueous, and of course largely aquatic, in
animals that are turned out in early morning before the dew has
evaporated, in the conditions, in other words, that favor the ingestion
of parasites. It prevails also in work oxen fed on the refuse of sugar
factories (beets, turnips) in which the nitrogenous materials are held
to be deficient, but in Great Britain where cattle are often fattened on
an exclusive diet of turnips, containing even a larger proportion of
water, this non-parasitic disease is unknown. It is also ascribed to
close, ill-ventilated, unwholesome buildings, and to over-kept and
tainted fodder, and so far as a separate disease exists, it seems more
reasonable to charge it to the toxins produced by bacterial ferments or
cryptogams than to causes which elsewhere appear to be inoperative.
The _symptoms_ are essentially those of distomatosis, and the
_treatment_, apart from the parasiticides, is the same. When
helminthiasis can be certainly excluded _prevention_ would include the
avoidance of the factory refuse, especially when in a state of decay.