H.-KMO(;i.or.iNURiA (azoturia) in the hoksk. 259 



of hysmoglobinuria. W^e likewise found that blood-serum from horses 

 affected with this disease had no special effect in destroying formed 

 blood elements. Injected into the veins of the rabbit, it did not seem 

 more distinctly toxic than normal serum. 



The theory that haemoglobinuria is an infectious disease is not new. 

 In France it was advocated by M. Signol, and particularly by M. 

 Arloing. It better accounts for the phenomena occurring during the 

 course of the affection than any other. These are said to result from 

 auto-infection or auto-intoxication, due either to a ferment present in 

 the food or to the abundant formation of metabolic products under the 

 double influence of cold and movement in animals predisposed by 

 long rest in the stable. It is to-day generally allowed that the cause, 

 whatever it may be, produces change in the red blood-corpuscles, 

 destruction of a greater or smaller number, with solution of their haemo- 

 globin in the blood-plasma, thus setting up hsemoglobinuria, from which 

 all the other lesions are said to be derived. Against this theory it is 

 urged that the disease behaves in no wise like an infectious process, 

 that it is not contagious, that all attempts at transmission have failed, 

 that blood removed aseptically during life does not always give a 

 coloured or red serum ; finally, that the metabolic products which, 

 on the theory of auto-intoxication, should exist in large quantities in 

 the blood, are at times only met with in normal proportion. However 

 this may be, the disease certainly offers some resemblance to an infec- 

 tious process, and it would not be surprising if one day this view of 

 its pathology were bacteriologically confirmed. What was known 

 fifteen years ago regarding the pathogeny of tetanus ? that toxi-infectious 

 disease which can never be transmitted, so to speak, directly, and the 

 development of which, like that of haemoglobinuria, is so favoured by 

 cold. 



The muscular or rheumatismal theory supported by Frohner com- 

 pares haemoglobinuria of the horse with paroxysmal haemoglobinuria a 

 frigore in man. The principal cause of the equine disease is said to be 

 the action of cold ; the essential and primary change degeneration in 

 certain muscles, the colouring material of which is liberated, and to- 

 gether with other substances passes into the blood, accumulates there, 

 produces secondary lesions in the internal organs, and is then elimi- 

 nated by various emunctories, especially by the kidney, whence the deep 

 coloration of the urine and the nephritis. The partisans of this theory 

 lay stress on the fact that grave lesions almost always exist in several 

 groups of muscle, that the sudden action of cold is capable of rapidly 

 producing change and discoloration of muscle ; finally, that the blood 

 of animals affected with haemoglobinuria contains an excessive proper- 



