154 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 



Thinking that possibly the ulcerations in the 

 mouth might yield to poly-bacterins, I gave the 

 horse a full dose hypodermically. The result 

 was no effect on the ulcerations but a large slough 

 at the point of injection, which was difficult to 

 heal up. Of course, I blamed the bacterins. But 

 later, when I gave this same horse a hypodermic 

 injection of strychnin as a stimulant I got 

 another slough. I have never been able to explain 

 this to my own satisfaction. It was not due to 

 careless injection or dirty needle or syringe, 

 because I had no trouble in other diseases, for 

 which I gave injections with the same syringe 

 and needle during that period. 



The only half-plausible explanation is that 

 there is a tendency in this disease towards the 

 formation of ulcers as a result of which the capil- 

 lary circulation is so subdued that anything 

 injected subcutaneously remains at the site and, 

 acting as a foreign body, produces the slough by 

 pressure and decomposition of the agent injected. 

 I have already mentioned that in one case we 

 noted ulcerations on the skin. 



One disease was conspicuous in this region 

 only through its absence. During the entire ten 

 weeks that we were there, handling fully around 

 four hundred patients, we saw not one single case 

 of pulmonary emphysema. This we attribute to 

 the dry air and high altitude; the altitude here 

 was around six thousand feet above sea level. 



A very interesting condition which we encoun- 

 tered in a mare here was a cancerous condition of 

 the mammary gland. Resection was followed 



