In the Stable, Field, and on the Road. 49 



catarrhal affection. But when this subtle agency exists 

 in the air and is exerting itself, another phenomenon is 

 witnessed of an entirely different nature, and of essen- 

 tially typhoid tendencies, the distinguishing mark or 

 effect of which is an unusual, peculiar, and general 

 weakness, a most susceptible system, and the small, 

 feeble character of the pulse. 



Is influenza contagious and infectious ? My own 

 experience leads me to the belief that it is not. During 

 the last ten years I have had upwards of one hundred 

 cases of undoubted influenza, and have watched it very 

 closely, yet up to the present time I have never seen one 

 single clear case of the affected animal communicating the 

 distemper. I have had cases of young horses in the farm 

 yard all running together, drinking out of the same trough, 

 eating out of the same manger ; some of them have had 

 influenza, and others not. We frequently see one or more 

 horses in a large stable affected, and the horse in the stall 

 next to the worst case perfectly healthy. I must remind 

 my readers that contagion, strictly speaking, implies the 

 capability of certain diseases being produced by actual 

 contact of the healthy animal with some part of the one 

 labouring under disease, and not through the medium of 

 the atmosphere. On the other hand, infection is the word 

 used to denote the propagation of maladies through the 

 medium of the air, which becomes charged with the con- 

 taminating principle given off in the form of exhalations 

 from the diseased animal, and which excites the like 

 disease in those animals that are subject to its influence, 

 they being predisposed to take the malady. Now I come 

 to the nature of influenza. Most influenzas have been 

 D 



