Cattle 1853 - Lewis Family Farm

CHAPTER XVIII.
DISEASES OF THE MUSCULAR SYSTEM AND OP
THE EXTREMITIES..
RHEUMATISM. ~
It is inflammation of the fascia, or cellular coat of the muscles, and
also, of the ligaments and synovial membranes of the jointe. If a
cow has been exposed to unusual cold and wet, particularly after
calving, or too soon after recovery from serious illness, she will often
be perceived to droop. She becomes listless, unwilling to move,
and by degrees gets off her feed. If urged to move, there is a
marked stiffness in her action, at first referable chiefly, or almost
entirely, to the spine ; and she walks as if all the articulations of the
back and loins had lost their power of motion. She shrinks when
pressed on the loins ; and the stiffness gradually spreads to the fore
or hind limbs. The farmer calls it chine felhm ; if it gets a little
worse, it acquires the name of joint fellcm, and worse, unless care is
taken, it speedily will become. Some of the joints swell ; they are
hot and tender ; the animal can scarcely bend them ; and she cannot
move without difficulty and evident pain.
We find rheumatism in cattle chiefly prevalent in a cold, marshy
country—in places exposed to the coldest winds—in spring and in
autumn, when there is the greatest vicissitude of heat and cold— in
animals that have been debilitated by insufficient diet, and that cannot
withstand the influence of sudden changes of temperature—in
old cattle particularly, and such as have been worked hard, and then
turned out into the cold «ir, with the perspiration still hanging about
them.
It seems to assume the acute and the chronic form. One animal
will labor under considerable fever ; he will scarcely be able to move
at all, or when he does, it extorts from him an expression of suffering.
Another seems to be gay and well, when the air is warm and
dry ; but as soon as the wind shifts, or immediately before it changes,
he is uneasy and comparatively helpless. On some portions of a
farm, nothing seems to ail the cattle ; on others, lower, moister, or
more exposed, the cattle crawl about stiffly and in pain. In some.