Cattle 1853 - Lewis Family Farm

GLOSS-ANTHRAX, OR BLAIN. 199
In a very short time the unpleasant smell will diminish or cease,
ar.d the ulcers will begin to assume a more healthy character.
When all fetor is removed, the mouth should be bathed with a lotion
composed of equal parts of tincture of myrrh and water, or a
pretty strong solution of alum, and a fourth part of the tincture of
catechu. »
This treatment will be usually successful if the ulceration has not
assumed too much of the gangrenous character, and if -symptomatic
or low fever has not appeared in too intense a degree. These are
very important circumstances, and should not be passed lightly over,
for several of the most fatal diseases are of comparatively little im-
portance, and easily got rid of in the early stage, and neglect produces
all the danger. The blain, although easily cured when attacked
in its early state, becomes uniformly fatal if neglected.
In these early stages of the blain, the disease should not be always
so simply treated, and the mere lancing of the vesicles the only means
adopted ; but it should be the first thing done, and that on which
there is the greatest dependence, as attacking the fountain-head of
all the after mischief, and getting rid of the danger of suffocation at
least.
The blain, suffered to take its course, speedily becomes connected
with fever, and that fever is not long in taking on a typhoid form ;
even then we should certainly extract blood. Four, or five, or six
quarts should be taken away, according to the size of the beast, and
theurgency of the case; or rather we would bleed until we begin
to perceive its effect on the general circulation.
In addition to this, as constipation usually accompanies the commencement
of fever, and is never absent in cases of blain, we should
administer a purgative—from a pound to a pound and a half of
Epsom salts ;
and likewise throw up some laxative injections.
Let Epsom or Glauber salts, or the common culinary salt, be
dissolved in simple water or thin gruel. They want nothing to in-
sure or increase their effect.
The practitioner may not be called in until gangrenous ulcers fill
the mouth, and the membrane of the mouth, and the tongue itself,
seem to be sloughing away in pieces ; ulcers, perhaps, have also begun
to appear externally behind or under the jaw ; and, most of all
to be dreaded, and frequently accompanying the worst stages of
blain, ulcers begin to break out about the feet, and particularly at
the, junction of the hair and the hoof, and threaten the loss of the
hoof.
Chloride of lime must be used from morning to night, until the
cangrenous character of the ulcers is changed, and then the tincture
of aloes, or the tincture of myrrh substituted. Ulcers in any
other part, particularly about the feet, must undergo a similar
treatment. Chloride of lime, the solution being by degrees strength-