[Clinical changes in whole-body irradiated cattle]

Clinical manifestations of an acute radiation sickness in groups of heifers of the age of seven to nine months, irradiated with a multipoint spatial 60Co source with the doses of 3.7, 2.0, and 1.2 J per kg-1 (450, 250, and 150 R) were studied. Those doses evoked different stages of clinical manifestations, which made it possible to differentiate severe, medium, and light forms of the radiation sickness. The different forms vary with the intensity of the clinical manifestations, with the length of survival, and, above all, with the length of latent stage. The severe form had mostly a lethal course with the exit between the 15th to 19th day, in the case of the medium form the length of survival increases to the 25th to 28th day, and the light form showed no significant clinical manifestations.