260 EPIDEMIC CATARRH. 



This disease is clearly attributable to atmospheric influence, but of the precise 

 nature of this influence we are altogether ignorant. It is some foreign inju- 

 rious principle which mingles with and contaminates the air, but whence this 

 poison is derived, or how it is diffused, we know not. It is engendered, or it 

 is most prevalent, in cold ungenial weather ; or this weather may dispose the 

 patient for catarrh, or prepare the tissues to be affected by causes which would 

 otherwise be harmless, or which may at all times exist. 



It is most frequent in the spring of the year, but it occasionally rages in 

 autumn and in winter. It is epidemic ; it spreads over large districts. It 

 sometimes pervades the whole country. Scarcely a stable escapes. Its appear- 

 ance is sudden, its progress rapid. Mr. Wilkinson had 36 new cases in one day. 

 It is said that a celebrated practitioner in London had nearly double that num- 

 ber in less than twenty-four hours. 



At other times it is endemic. It pervades one town ; one little tract of 

 country. It is confined to spots exceedingly circumscribed. It is dependent 

 on atmospheric agency, but this requires some injurious adjuvant arid the prin- 

 ciple of contagion must probably be called into play. It has been rife enough in 

 the lower parts of the metropolis, while in the upper and north-western districts 

 scarcely a case has occurred. It has occasionally been confined to a locality not 

 extending half-a-mile in any direction. In one of the cavalry barracks the 

 majority of the horses on one side of the yard were attacked by epidemic 

 catarrh, while there was not a sick horse on the other side. These prevalences 

 of disease, and these exceptions, are altogether unaccountable. The stables, 

 and the system of stable management, have been most carefully inquired into 

 in the infected and the healthy districts, and no satisfactory difference could be 

 ascertained. One fact, however, has been established, and a very important one 

 it is to the horse proprietor as well as the practitioner. The probability of the 

 disease seems to be in proportion to the number of horses inhabiting the 

 stable. Two or three horses shut up in a comparatively close stable may 

 escape. Out of thirty horses, distributed through ten or fifteen little stables, not 

 one may be affected; but in a stable containing ten or twelve horses the 

 disease will assuredly appear, although it may be proportionally larger and well 

 ventilated. It is on this account that postmasters and horse-dealers dread its ap- 

 pearance. In a sickly season their stables are never free from it ; and if, per- 

 chance, it does enter one of their largest stables, almost every horse will be 

 affected. Therefore also it is that grooms have so much dread of a distempered 

 stable, and that the odds are so seriously affected if distemper has broken out in 

 a racing establishment. 



Does this lead to the conclusion that epidemic catarrh is contagious? Not neces- 

 sarily, but it excites strong suspicion of its being so; and there are so many facts of 

 the disease following the introduction of a distempered horse into an establish- 

 ment, that this malady must rank among those that are both contagious and 

 epidemic. There are few well-informed grooms, or extensive owners of horses, 

 and living much among them, or veterinary surgeons of considerable practice, 

 who entertain the least doubt about the matter. Then every necessary pre- 

 caution should be adopted. The horse that exhibits symptoms of epidemic 

 catarrh should be removed as soon as possible. The affected horses should be 

 removed, and not the sound ones, for they, although apparently sound, may 

 have the malady lurking about them, and may more widely propagate the 

 disease. 



With regard to the treatment of epidemic catarrh there may be, and is at 

 times, considerable difficulty. It is a disease of the mucous membrane, and 

 thus connected with much debility ; but it is also a disease of a febrile character, 

 and the inflammation is occasionally intense. The veterinary surgeon, there 



