Infectious Bovine Keratoconjunctivitis “White Eye or Cloudy Eye”

Technical article published in Frisona Española magazine number 172 (July-August 2009)

I started studying veterinary medicine in 1979 and at that time there were many colleagues who came from rural areas, their fathers or a close relative were cattle farmers or sometimes even veterinarians. Nowadays almost no one comes from the villages, and perhaps this could be one of the reasons for the lack of interest of veterinary students in specializing in bovine medicine. In my case, my grandparents were cattle farmers. One of them always told me stories about cattle when I was little. How wolves killed sheep, how they crossed Madrid, doing transhumance.

“We had to go through Alcalá Street, through the Puerta de Alcalá, at night, because it could not be done during the day,” he told me.

And he also told me the various treatments and surgical techniques that he performed on animals. I was very impressed by the operations he performed on cows. One of them was to fix his ribs.

“When their eyes get really bad,” he told me, “you put a mustard straw through a hole in their nose and it reaches the eye and that’s how they get better.” When I grew up a little, I stopped being surprised at the things my grandfather told me, I think it happens to everyone. But after completing veterinary studies and specializing in cattle, over time I have recognized some of the diseases they told me about and in many cases I have understood the meaning of the treatments they told me about. Told.

Very few people know the word Riza today. Riza, according to the “Espasa Dictionary of Medicine” of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Navarra, is the common name given to two diseases. One is dacryocystitis, an acute infection of the lacrimal sac that causes pain, redness, and swelling in the inner canthus of the eye, above the root of the nose. The second is chronic dacryocystitis: a condition of permanent blockage in the nasolacrimal duct, which manifests as persistent tearing due to blockage of the natural tear drainage path.

The nasolacrimal duct connects the palpebral sac of the eye to the nose. Through this, the tears continuously coming out from the eyes go into the nose. That’s why we often blow our nose when we’re about to cry. It is not that we suddenly caught cold, the point is that our nose is filled with tears.

But do cows suffer from Riza? People do this, and dogs do it too, but I have no evidence that this happens with cows, and yet at the beginning of the 20th century, in my town, Montejo de la Sierra, this happened with cows. Must have happened often. And it must also be an important disease, because it is not easy to flush the nasolacrimal duct in the cow. This involves, among other things, holding it properly with two or three people, or perhaps what would be even more likely, tying it to the village rack. The typical symptom of Riza is continuous tears, the face being constantly wet with tears. This can be caused by a blockage in the nasolacrimal duct, as we have said before, or, which is more common, by excessive production of tears that cannot be drained and overflow, as happens when When we cry or when we suffer from conjunctivitis.

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Technical articles published by Juan Vicente González Martín Spanish Frisian magazine number 172Corresponding to the months of July and August 2009.