Puerperal Fever
Categories:
Diseases and their Remedies
This disease--milk fever, or dropping after calving--rarely occurs until
the animal has attained mature age. The first symptoms make their
appearance in from one to five or six days after parturition. It appears
to be a total suspension of nervous function, independent of
inflammatory action, which is suddenly developed, and, in favorable
cases, as suddenly disappears. It is called dropping after calving, from
its foll
wing the parturient state.
Symptoms.--Tremor of hind legs; a staggering gait, which soon
terminates in loss of power in the hind limbs; pulse rises to sixty or
eighty per minute; milk diminishing in quantity as the disease
progresses; the animal soon goes down, and is unable to rise, moans
piteously; eyes set in the head; general stupor; and slow respiration.
Treatment.--This disease, though generally regarded as a febrile
disorder, will not yield to the general practice of taking blood, as a
large majority of the cases so treated die. The bowels must be opened,
but the veins never. Give Epsom-salts, one pound; Jamaica ginger, two
ounces; dissolve in warm water, one quart, and drench. The author
usually gives with good effect, some five or six hours after the salts,
two ounces of nitric ether and one ounce of tincture of opium, in half a
pint of water. Rub well in, along the back and loins, the following:
strong mustard, three ounces; aqua ammonia and water, each one and a
half ounces. Some modifications in the treatment of this disease, as
well as of most others, will be necessary under certain circumstances,
which can only be determined by the veterinary practitioner.