204 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



Lansiug', Micliigaii, during the visiCatiou. JBy iustiiutiug' a yeriew of 

 experiineutal observatious at different nou-iufected places, as the South- 

 ern and Western States, including the Pacific slope, and continuing 

 these until the disease is at its height, the question could be decided as 

 to Avhether these are essential accessory causes. It has been sufficiently 

 demonstrated that they are not the true specific causes. 



Another point which wants elucidation is the inoculability of the 

 disease, or its transmissibility, by transferring the blood of a sick animal 

 into a healthy system. The limitation of the poison to the air passages, 

 which the failure to transmit the disease by transfusion would seem to 

 imply, would have a very imiiortant bearing on the question of prevention 

 and treatment. 



Definition. — An epizootic specific fever of a very debilitating type, 

 with inflammation of the respiratory mucous membrane, and less fre- 

 quently of other organs, having an average duration of ten to fifteen 

 days, and not conferring immunity from a second attack in subsequent 

 epizootics. 



Synonyms. — The corresponding disease in man was known to the older 

 physicians as Ferifpneumonia notha, P. ty2)hoides, P. catarrJialis, Fleuritvi 

 Jiumida, Fidris catarralilis, Catarrhe ^Jlumonaire, CatarrJms d contagio, 

 Defiuxus caiarrhalis, Gejglialalgia contagiosa., Rlieuma e^idcmicuno, &c. As 

 seen in animals it has received the following designations : Epizootic 

 catarrh, catarrhal fever, gastro-catarrhal fever, mucous fever, gangrenous 

 peripneumonia, epizootic pleuro-pneumonia, entero-pneumo-carditis, 

 epizootic nervous fever, distemper, hlitz Tiatarrli, rheumatic catarrh, la 

 grippe, cocote, typliose, septica^mio, &c. 



Fast history. — The frequent co-existence of an epizootic catarrh in 

 man and the horse, and to a less extent in other animals, lends some 

 color to the hypothesis that they are due to closely-allied causes. The 

 records of its prevalence in man might therefore be profitably referred 

 to as illustrating the action of such causes at a time when veterinary 

 records are few and imperfect. 



Between 415 and 412 before Christ, Hippocrates and Livius report 

 the extraordinary prevalence of catarrhal maladies in Greece and 

 Eome, which Schuurrer and Hteser suppose to have been influenza. 

 Diodorus Siculus reports an epidemic, ai^parently of the same kind, in 

 the Athenian army in Sicily in 415. 



Absyrtus, a Greek veterinarian, writing about A. D. 330, describes a 

 disease in the horse having the general characters of influenza. This 

 appears to be the earliest record of such an affection^ in the lower ani- 

 mals, yet the reports of epidemics at an earlier date "almost necessarily 

 imply the existence of the equine malady. 



Passing over a number of epidemics, we come to the next recorded 

 equine influenza in A. D. 1299. In this year a catarrhal epidemic 

 spread widely in Europe, (Parkes.) The equine disease is thus described 

 by Laurentius Eusius, as it prevailed at Seville : " The horse carried 

 his head drooping, would eat nothing, ran from the eyes, and there was 

 hurried beating of the flanks. The malady was epidemic, and in that 

 year one thousand horses died." 



Six epidemics of influenza are recorded in the fourteenth century, 

 but among animals nothing more than an epizootic quinsy at Kome, 

 from which Eusius, who reports it, lost fifty horses. 



We have no distinct evidence of influenza in animals in the fifteenth 

 and sixteenth centuries, though in 1510 and 1580-'81, during the preva- 

 lence of cattarrhal epidemics in Europe, animals suffered severely, from 

 what disease is not stated, (Salius Diversus, Thomas Short.) 



