ETIOLOGY. — XATUKE AND SYMPTOMS. 37 



liberty and more freedom of location. Rarely are horses in 

 any numbers brought from markets or the country, and placed 

 in stables in cities, without a considerable proportion of these 

 exhibiting symptoms, more or less marked, of fever. 



Exposure to wet, fatigue, and exhaustion induced by travel- 

 ling or imperfect and irregular dieting, or, where these causes 

 may not be blamed, simple transference from the open air and 

 unrestrained exercise to confinement in stables, are evidently 

 the agents which to ordinary observers are the most potent 

 factors in the production of this disordered condition. 



Whether these are to be regarded as the disturbers of the 

 nervous centres controlling the discharge of the animal heat, 

 and by the retention of this heat causing elevation of body- 

 temperature and ultimate disorder of the functions of animal 

 nutrition, or whether the whole chain of phenomena should be 

 regarded as proceeding from and inseparably linked to original 

 textural changes as the originating cause, it is for us, in the 

 appHcation of preventive measures, at least sufficient to know 

 that certain recognisable and controllable agencies are obviously 

 capable of thus operating in an injurious manner on the animal 

 body. 



Nature and Symptoms. — In ordinary cases, and free from 

 comphcations, simple fever is a comparatively mild and benign 

 disease, disposed to run a definite course, and to terminate 

 favourably in from two to eight days. It is essentially a dis- 

 turbed or perturbed state of all, or nearly all, the chief functions 

 of the animal body. 



Derangement of the functions of enervation is indicated by 

 disturbed or perverted sensation, by pain and general prostra- 

 tion ; the circulatory and respiratory functions are affected, as 

 indicated by the frequency and altered character of the pulse 

 and by the embarrassed or accelerated breathing ; digestion is 

 in abeyance and the secretory functions perverted or impaired, 

 while the chemical changes always in operation in the animal 

 body are in the febrile state particularly active, as evidenced by 

 the marked and rapid wasting of muscular tissue. 



The two great central points in this condition of pyrexia, as 

 in fever, when occurring as a complex morbid process in asso- 

 ciation with distinct or recomised structural changes, where it 



