INFLUENZA IN HOESES. 215 



ing, unventilated, often underground buildings ; or where they had been 

 worn out by injudicious and exhausting treatment. 



These dropsies are always dangerous, implying as they do extreme 

 exhaustion and prostration of the vital powers, saturation of the blood 

 with waste and hurtful elements, the product of the extensive waste of 

 the body or comi^lications on the part of the heart or kidneys. 



Nervoics conqiUcations. — The extreme muscular weakness and the oc- 

 casional semi-comatose condition of the i)atient imply a profound pros- 

 tration of the nervous centers, a condition which is, however, i)resent to 

 a variable extent in nearly all specific fevers. This has sometimes in 

 the recent einzootic amounted to twitching of the muscles of the face, 

 neck, body, or limbs, and has been known to result in delirium, and 

 even partial or complete loss of control over the limbs. My friend and 

 former collegian, Mr. Murray, of Detroit, has met with but three cases 

 of extreme nervons disorder out of five hundred patients during the 

 recent epizootic. Two of these he diagnosed as serous elfiision into 

 one ventricle of the brain, and one was a case of complete hemiplegia. 



Inflamed eyes as a complication. — Eutty informs us that this was an 

 almost constant accompaniment of the influenza in Ireland in 17G0, 

 and that many of the horses were left permanently blind. In that of 

 1845, in England, the afiection of the eyes was again a prominent 

 feature. Few cases lasted over a week, but the ophthalmia often per- 

 sisted loug after all other symptoms had passed away. In nearly all 

 epizootics there is a slight implication of these organs evinced by the 

 redness of the mucous membrane of the lids, and the escape of tears 

 over the face. But when the ophthalmia becomes an important feature 

 there is excessive swelling of the lids, a profuse purulent discharge 

 from the inner corner of the eye, opacity of the transparent cornea, with 

 or without a painful sensitiveness to light. In bad cases it results in 

 permanent cloudiness of the cornea, or cataract, according to the parts 

 involved. 



Furtlier seqnelce. — In overworked or mismanaged horses other affec- 

 tions will sometimes wind up the malady. When the system is greatly 

 depressed, when the vitality of the blood and tissues is greatly impaired 

 by the presence of the fever-poison, when the vital fluid is loaded with 

 the vast products of the rapid tissue changes due to the fever, and to 

 over-exertion on the part of animals utterly xmfit for it 5 when the 

 elimination of these eftete matters is almost suspended by tlie impaired 

 functions of the gTeat excretory organs, such as the lungs, liver, bow- 

 els, kidneys, and skin, there is liable to supervene the state known to 

 English veterinarians as^jjo^mm licpmorrliagica. In this afiection there 

 is disorganization and breaking down of the blood particles, and extrav- 

 asation of the liquid elements of the blood, and in some eases of the 

 coloring elements as well, into the tissues surrounding tlie blood-vessels. 

 Blood seems to sweat from the swellings in the skin, or from the mucous 

 membrane, and flows from the nose, the intestines, or the urinary pas- 

 sages. The swellings are circumscribed and not situated, like those of 

 dropsy, on the more dependent parts of the body ; if they involve the 

 head the whole organ may be engorged until it becomes impossible for 

 the animal to open his mouth or eyelids, or even to breathe. If less 

 extensive, and consisting merely of a circumscribed serous infiltration, 

 the swellings may shift about from day to day, disappearing only from 

 one place to re-appear in another. The blood in such cases is found to 

 contain much free hiematim, or coloring matter, and fragments of 

 broken-up, red globules ; it coagulates imperfectly and loosely, or not 

 at all, but remains as a dark, tarry -looking mass, and before death con- 



