James Law

“ The intensity of the suffering rapidly increases, the face is drawn and pinched, the eye is extremely anxious, the patient no longer lies down, but throws himself down reckless of consequences, when down he is not quiet for an instant, but now on his breast, then on his side, then on his back, the limbs struggling and jerked violently, the head turned first to one side and then to the other, he is a picture of extreme agony. ”

“ It is a common experience to see a malady transformed through the effects of heredity or acquired immunity, through environment or the temporary mitigation of virulence in the germ; and again we see the same disease, no longer restrained by such inhibitory conditions, bursting forth as a malignant and deadly plague. We have, therefore, no warrant for the hypothesis that a pathogenic germ which, under given conditions of life, has lost in pathogenesis, but not in vitality, should continue forever to exist as a harmless microbe. ”

“ There is no sense of fire or life, but the face is like a dull sculptured mass. The immobile face finds a sharp contrast in the alertness of the ears, which may be carried one forward and another back, but fixed and yet ready to turn to catch every sound. ”

“ Prognosis is a more complicated question for the veterinarian than for the physician. The latter must pronounce on the malady, whether it is likely to follow a regular or irregular course, whether it will last short or long, whether it will be curable or incurable, and if curable whether recovery would be complete or partial. For the veterinarian there is in addition the question of economy. The veterinary patient is, as a rule, of value, only if he can be rendered sound, and a partial recovery may be even worse than a fatal result, since the subject remains as a ruinous charge on his owner. ”

“ If the object of the sanitarian were merely to delay a fatal result in his tuberculous patient, while he accepted the prevalence of tuberculosis as inevitable for all future time, the acknowledged lessened receptivity of the ox for the bacillus from man would mean more and would be at least worthy of a hearing, but as the extinction of a disease germ and its representative plague must ever be the first object, any movement toward the preservation in cattle of a germ which is deadly to man and much more so to cattle, must be held as subversive of the prime purpose of sanitary work. ”

“ Training is seen in the educated horse which would have been panic stricken at sight of a locomotive, flag or floating paper, at the smell of a lion or bear, at the sound of a gun or drum, and which will now boldly face any one of these with no manifest tremor. ”

“ DISEASES OF THE LIVER. In veterinary and medical works the diseases of the liver have been accorded a minor place, ill in keeping with the great physiological importance of the organ. If the function of the liver were circumscribed by the mere secretion of bile there would be some excuse for the apparent neglect, as the gland is so deeply situated and so much enveloped in surrounding organs that physical exploration is difficult and somewhat unsatisfactory, and the one symptom of jaundice was long relied on as indicating hepatic disorder. ”

“ How frequently do human beings suffer from colds as the result of a close sultry period at once supervening on a clear cold one? How extensively do chest diseases prevail among horses brought from the clear pure atmosphere of the field, and shut up in close, hot stables? Here, no doubt, there is superadded the impurity of the too often infected air, the change of diet, of exercise and of general care yet we find that affections of the air passages are to a great extent in ratio with the heat of the building. ”

“ It should be further considered that any law is at once bad and vicious in its tendency which places before the citizen the alternatives of disobedience with profit, and obedience with loss or ruin. Such a law is the worst possible economy because in preserving the infection, it not only perpetuates the disease and its attendant losses for all time, but perpetuates forever the official expenses of keeping it in check, when a prompt extinction of the infection would once for all time abolish all loss and all outlay for surveillance. ”

“ With fore limbs strapped up, the animal soon exhausts himself in his efforts to disengage them and escape, and lies down completely reconciled to his fate. He may now be accustomed to his objects of terror—the opening and closing of an umbrella, or the waving of a flag over his head, the discharge of a gun close to his ear, the passing of car or locomotive, or any other object of his dread. When allowed to get up he will usually pay no further attention to these things, especially if patted and spoken to encouragingly, and perhaps fed apple or sugar, or something of which he is fond. ”

“ The violence of the colics may cease, but the pulse becomes rapid, small, and finally imperceptible, the breathing hurried, the head depressed, eyelids, ears and often the lower lips drooping, the face becomes heavy and expressionless, the belly distended and tender, the skin covered with cold sweat, and the temperature exalted above or depressed below the normal. ”

“ The craving for pure air, so strikingly shown by the position which the animal assumes, ought never to be ignored nor neglected. We do not advocate the system of the late Professor Coleman who kept pneumonia patients in open sheds exposed to all vicissitudes of temperature winter or summer, and yet the fact that many recovered under such treatment as well as under a more rigorous system, having been turned out into the open fields amidst frost and snow, ought to open the eyes of all to the incomparable value of fresh air in this disease. ”

“ In examining animals for soundness and especially the horse or dog, the condition of the eye must be made one of the most important subjects of inquiry, as a disease or defect may render the animal altogether unsuited to the object to which it is destined. As in every other field of diagnosis thoroughness is largely dependent on the adoption of a system which will stand in the way of any flaw being too hastily overlooked. ”

“ In animals, especially, the evidence was so frequent and clear, animal following animal in the same stall, and eating from the same infected manger, only to be infected in turn, and two animals stalled together, and licking the same manger with their prehensile tongues, transmitting the infection with certainty the one to the other, were facts that could not possibly be ignored. Other cattle in the same building might escape for a length of time, but the eating in common from the same fatal manger, by a tuberculous and a healthy animal, quickly sealed the fate of the latter. ”

“ Soon nervous disorder appears, the eyes glare wildly, the animal seeks relief in motion, it may be in a straight line, or to one side, and being blind and unconscious of obstacles he may fall into pits, or ditches, dash against trees, fences or buildings, and if they offer sufficient resistance he will continue pushing, breaking teeth or horns, and subject to violent muscular contractions, causing even the grubs to start from the back. The nervous disorder is often further shown in loud and terrified bellowing as if chased by a dog or gored by one of its fellows. ”

“ PERCUSSION IN DISEASE. Increase of resonance without any perceptible modification in character is usually partial and depends on the increased distension of the air cells of one lung, or part of a lung, to make up for the loss of a part or a whole lung through hepatization or pressure by false membrane or from water in the chest. If a part of a lung is solid and impervious it gives a dull, dead sound, contrasting strongly with the increased clearness of the remainder. So with water in the chest, the clearness of the upper parts contrasts unmistakably with the dullness of the lower. ”

“ The eyes are bloodshot and become fixed and glazed, winking ceases, the breathing is slow, pulse infrequent, and temperature often subnormal. The extremities and surface of the body are cool, the muzzle dry, the coat usually stares, the apathy merges into a complete hebetude, torpor and coma, in which condition the animal often dies on the eighth or tenth day. Violent exercise precipitates the death at once. Recoveries are infrequent and attended by no critical discharge from bowels or kidneys, only by a slow, at first almost imperceptible, resumption of natural action. ”

“ In man the entire heart and connecting blood vessels are so open to examination that the physician can pronounce with the greatest accuracy not only concerning the existence of disease, but also its precise locality and nature. In the quadruped no such facility is open to us, and veterinarians have too generally refused to face the difficulty, preferring to ignore heart diseases, or still worse seeking to cover their ignorance by the assertion that such affections rarely exist. ”

“ Chronic inflammation in the prostate has been claimed as a factor, but contested on the ground that inflammation never increases normal growth though it may cause degeneration. The exudate of inflammation, tends, however, on its temporary arrest, to undergo organization, and such organization inclines to assume the structure which is normally built up by the adjacent trophic cells. The products of inflammation may, therefore, well contribute to hypertrophy, and above all to the increase of the simpler tissue represented by the fibrous framework of the gland. ”

“ Under such a system there is no object in secreting infection, and in underhanded sale of tuberculous animals, with the spread of the disease into new centres. Even the tardy or inimical stockowner is roused to action by public opinion, when he finds the market for his suspected product growing more and more uncertain, and feels the daily encreasing pressure of opinion among neighboring owners, that he is exceeding his rights in maintaining an infected herd in the very midst of their purified ones. ”

“ Partial or local death may be molecular as in ulceration, or it may affect an organ or part of an organ, as in necrosis, sphacelus, or sloughing. Somatic death is a loss of vitality of the entire body and is manifested by a complete cessation of the bodily functions, including that of nutrition. Usually the arrest begins with one of the great vital processes, in advance of the others, and thus in different cases, we have death beginning at the heart, at the lungs, and at the brain. ”

“ The balking horse is one that obstinately refuses to perform a piece of work for which his physical condition seems to be well adapted. The willfulness of the refusal is the important feature. In case of such a serious drawback to the value of a horse, the presumption of fraud on the part of the seller is unavoidable, in case he failed to mention the habit to the purchaser, but of course this is even more emphatically certified if he has warranted the animal as a good worker, or kind, or true in work. ”

“ The conclusion is inevitable, that as in the case of cattle, the sire may become the means of transmission, and that the same measures of prevention are demanded. The fact that the affection is less widely spread or injurious, than in cattle, is largely due to the usual presence of but one, two or three breeding mares on a farm, so that there is little opportunity for a rapid extension of the infection. Multiply and encrease our studs of breeding horses, as cows have been in our dairying districts, and abortion, once introduced, would prove equally infective, spreading and injurious. ”

“ This does not ignore that the chemical products or enzymes which are constructed by the vital activity of the microbes, will dissolve or transform organic matter, but in the absence of the microbe no such enzyme can reproduce nor multiply itself and its action must therefore be exactly limited by its amount. The living germ itself is therefore the one effective factor, by which the contagious disease may be maintained and propagated. In its turn the living germ can only come from a pre-existing living germ. ”

“ The cow that no longer aborts is not, therefore, a safe member of a herd. As an individual animal she has become resistant to the pathogenic influence of the germ, she is invulnerable to it to the extent that she no longer aborts, but her system and generative passages have acquired no such active bactericidal power over the microbe as to lead to its speedy destruction. The genital passages, once colonized, continue to be a field of growth of the bacillus long after its power to cause abortion in that particular animal has passed. ”

“ In the cow, lying with the udder on a cold stone may be the starting point of mammitis. The effect of sudden chill is well exemplified in the great prevalence of diseases of the respiratory organs at the change of the seasons in spring and autumn when the vicissitudes of temperature are greatest, and the system unprepared by habit, to bear the sudden change. Again it must be noted that exposure to cold has a tendency to cause disintegration and solution of the red blood globules, and that certain animals are especially susceptible to this influence. ”