Infectious necrotic hepatitis

Infectious necrotic hepatitis is a disease of large animals, especially sheep, caused by Clostridium novyi infection.

Spores of C. novyi escape from the gut and lodge in the liver, where they remain dormant until some injury creates anaerobic conditions for them to germinate, causing local necrosis and widespread damage to the microvascular system, resulting in subcutaneous bleeding and blackening of the skin, hence the common name "black disease".

[3] Peritoneal and thoracic cavities contains a great quantity of fluids, as does the pericardial sac.

There appear a great number of necrotic foci, 3 to 4 mm diameter, which extend deeply in the organ.

There are three ways that have proven most effective when controlling the snail populations:[5]

Liver of sheep dying from infectious necrotic hepatitis