378 PERIODIC OPHTHALMIA. 



tiveness, a mild laxative will prove beneficial. In all cases, 

 darkness will be found not only grateful to the patient, but 

 also highly favourable to recovery. 



INFLUENZA. 



The term influenza the Italian for INFLUENCE is a highly 

 improper one, but it is applied to a catarrhal or rheumatic 

 affection usually associated with much derangement of the 

 liver, subacute or latent inflammation of the pleurae, and a 

 low form of fever commonly called typhous or typhoid. The 

 marked feature of the disease is its appearance amongst many 

 animals simultaneously, often laying up all the horses on a 

 farm, and carrying off several. It is especially within the last 

 thirty years that information has been collected concerning 

 this occasionally very prevalent disease, and its supposed but 

 not proved greater frequency of late years, has been regarded 

 as evidence of a change of type of disease from that form in 

 which animals would bear free blood-letting to certain kinds 

 in which active bleeding or purging are usually followed by 

 great weakness and often by death. We can trace back to 

 1819 distinct outbreaks of the same influenza that we witness 

 occasionally at the present day. 



Influenza is essentially a protean malady, varying in its 

 source in different outbreaks, and much according to the state 

 of the weather. It is most common about spring and autumn, 

 and said to be most dangerous during the prevalence of 

 easterly winds. Influenza attacks young horses more than 

 old, and is occasionally communicated from the sick to the 

 healthy by infection or contagion. Veterinary surgeons have 

 noticed that the animals they have ridden about in their 

 practice have caught the disease from patients they have been 

 attending, and there is usually such a succession of cases 



