INFLUENZA IN HORSES. 235 



October 31, and the country to the east of it a week or two later. It 

 is needless to follow this subject farther. In the West the same truth 

 is equally manifest. oS^ot only do we find a tendency to follow the great 

 lines of rail, but in many cases a temporary avoidance of many of the 

 small towns on the track, whose commercial relations are less active, 

 and their danger of infection correspondingly small. 



It only remains to be determined whether the disease will spread in 

 a new locality from a newly imported sick animal as a center. If it can 

 be introduced in this way into a new locality, well out of the former 

 area of the disease, and spread promptly from the imported sick animal 

 as a center, it must be possessed of a specific coniagium. Were the 

 body merely charged with noxious gases, with decomposing organic 

 matter, or with electricity, it could never become the center for a wide 

 diffusion of a specific disease. These agents would soon pass from the 

 system and lose their noxious qualities by diffusion or decomposition. 

 The presence of the sick animal would be no more injurious than a 

 chemical laboratory, a putrid carcass, or an electric machine. 



Attention is called, then, to the following facts : The first cases in 

 Detroit were several sick horses brought from Canada;, about the 10th 

 or 11th of October ; others were attacked in less than two days, and 

 the malady appears to have been confined for nearly a week to the two 

 stables into which the Canadian beasts were brought. The first cases 

 in Syracuse were in newly arrived Canadian horses, and the malady 

 spread promptly in city and country. The earliest cases which I have 

 been able to trace in Ithaca were in the livery-stables of Mr. Jackson, 

 who had just returned from running a mare in a more northern part of 

 the State. In Pittsburgh the disease first appeared in the stables of 

 Messrs. Moreland & Mitchell after the arrival of. five or six horses from 

 New York, when the epizootic was then at its height. In every instance 

 it spread rapidly in the new locality. From Washington the first note 

 of alarm was sounded on October 28th, to the effect that sick horses 

 had been brought into the city from the North, and on November 31 it 

 was reported to be generally prevalent. In Lehigh County, Pennsyl- 

 vania, the malady appeared about November 4, and spread like fire 

 along the canal and into the surrounding country. On November 19 it 

 prevailed at points in Giles, Eutherford, Maury, Davidson, and Sum- 

 ner Counties, Tennessee, which had been recently visited by a circus, 

 coming from an infected locality, and while the general district was 

 free. At Newark, Delaware, the first case was in a horse just arrived 

 from Baltimore, and others speedily followed. At Elyria, Ohio, it was 

 confined for five days, and for five days only, to teams just back from 

 Cleveland. 



Most of these were instances of the appearance of the disease in an 

 entirely new locality, far beyond the limits of the region formerly per- 

 vaded by the disorder, and from such new points the infection spread 

 widely before the general country, or even many of the towns in the 

 interval between this and the former diseased area were involved. 



Instances of the same kind could easily be adduced from the history 

 of former epizootics. In influenza in man similar observations have 

 been made by such authorities as Barker, Haygarth, Williams, Parkes, 

 and Sir Thomas Watson. Persons just arrived from an infected place 

 have so frequently proved the center for a new diffusion of the poison 

 that some have attempted to trace all cases to contagion alone. 



It will be objected to this doctrine that Hertwig's inoculations, and 

 even the transfusion of blood from a sick to a healthy horse, has failed 



