In these cases--for even this mild form of the distemper at last produces death--the injuries fix themselves more exclusively on the digestive channels, and we witness, in dissection, ulcerations in some, in others mere spots of a livid red, more or less extensive.
Finally, although the typhus be one of the gravest maladies which destroy and decimate cattle, all sick animals are not mortally affected thereby. In the present epizootia, five per cent., as nearly as can be ascertained, recover; and when that happens, signs of a favourable omen are observable during the course of the attack. In these favourable instances, indeed, the symptoms, even though they exhibit a certain gravity, pursue a regular course; fever does not become remittent; the fæcal discharge is copious and easy, with less foetor; the animal loses flesh slowly and progressively; the tumours are cutaneous, inflammatory; their character is good, depurative, and rather purulent than gaseous and crackling. The droppings do not show that high degree of pestilential decomposition described above; the animal in his drink welcomes and digests a mixture of bran and flour; the secretions of purulent mucus and the fæcal discharges dry up and stop in the early part of the period of decline; the epidermis of the openings through which they passed out peels off in thin scales, and afterwards in scurfs or husks--in a word, the economy does not experience those acute disturbances which strike one of the tripods of life--that is to say, either the nervous centres, the lungs, or the digestive organs.
Now, in these curable cases, in which the cure is most generally due to nature's own efforts, but which a systematic treatment might render far more frequent, the convalescence is long, and requires great attention and a well-regulated diet, in which the food is carefully measured and divided. Here there must be a rigid superintendence. A laxity in the watchfulness, or too much reliance on the reviving health, have produced sudden relapses, and been fatal to many sick cattle, which had been looked upon as thoroughly cured. For it may well be conceived that convalescent animals, after sustaining such violent derangements in their health, and having been brought down to the lowest degree of prostration and marasmus--to a reconstitution, we may call it, of the solids and liquids--have a devouring hunger. If, therefore, the keeper who looks after them unhappily forgets that the principal lesions or sores are seated in the stomach and intestines, and if he gives them too much solid nutriment, he impedes the cure, irritates the ulcerations not yet thoroughly covered over, and soon adds another victim to those which had already died.