Cattle 1853 - Lewis Family Farm

CATTLE.
vomicae in the lungs, and effusion in the pericardium. Every stomach
is inflamed, and the fourth ulcerated through. The substance of the
liver is broken down. There are ulcerations generally of the smaller;
and always of the larger, intestines ; and in every part of the cel-
lular membrane there are large patches of inflammation running fast
into gangrene.
There cannot be a doubt respecting either the nature or treatment
of such a disease. It is, at first, of a purely inflammatory character,
but the inflammation is so intense as speedily to destroy the
powers of nature. The capillary vessels must have been working
with strange activity, in order to fill and to clog every venous canal.
The congestion prevails in the cranium as well as in other parts,
and the distended vessels press upon the substance of the brain, and
that pressure is propagated to the commencement of the nerves ;
and hence debility, and staggering, and almost perfect insensibility.
As the congestion early takes place, the coma, or stupor, is early
in its appearance.
The nervous energy being thus impeded, the power of locomotion
seems first to fail ; then general debility succeeds, and at length
other parts of the vasculap system are involved. The mouths of
the excretory ducts can no longer contract on their contents;. hence
fluid is effused in the chest and in the belly, and in the cellular
membrane ; and hence, too, the rapid formation of others. The vital
powers generally are weakened, and in consequence of this there
is the speedy tendency of every excretion to putridity, and the actual
commencement of decomposition, while the animal is yet alive. The
blood shares in this abstraction or deficiency of vitality, and hence
the disposition to ulceration, gangrene, and dissolution, by which the
later stages of the disease are characterized.
Inflammatory fever, although not confined to young stock, is far
most prevalent among them. It appears principally in the spring
and fall of the year, for then we have the early and late flush of
grass. On poor ground it is comparatively unknown ; but the young
and the old stock, in thriving condition, need to be closely watched
when the pasture is good and the grass springing. If it be at times
epidemic, it is only when the season, or the eagerness of the farmer,
have exposed the constitution to an excess of otherwise healthy
stimulus, and when the animal is in a manner prepared for fever.
When the early part of the spring has been cold and ungenial, and
then the warm weather has suddenly set in, nothing is so common
as inflammatory fever ; but the change in the temperature, or other
qualities of the atmosphere, has had only an indirect effect in producing
this ; it is the sudden increase of nutriment which has done
the mischief. When cattle are moved from a poor to a more luxuriant
pasture, if the new .grass be sufficiently high, they distend the
paunch almost tp bursting, and hoove is the jesult ; but if tha