166 ERYSIPELAS. 



When closely watched, the first symptoms of inclisjjosition 

 will be the ordinary shivering-fit of simple fever, with staring 

 coat, exalted body-temperature, and evidence of muscular 

 pain. The digestive organs appear to have suddenly become 

 deranged, the mouth is hot and clammy, the tongue furred, 

 while the breath has a disagreeable acrid smell, the bowels 

 disposed to be confined, and the faeces coated with tenacious 

 mucus. 



Like other severe febrile disorders, there is, during its 

 progress, obvious wasting of the muscular system indicative of 

 tissue-change, and, as it advances, much prostration, the irrita- 

 tion and excitement being always greatest at the outset. All 

 these constitutional symptoms, the character of the fever, the 

 condition of the digestive, circulatory, and other organs, vary 

 with the stage of the disease, its intensity, the existing sus- 

 ceptibility of the system, and the depressing and vitiating in- 

 fluences of adverse atmospheric and sanitary conditions. 



Of the local symptoms, the earliest seldom manifest them- 

 selves more than twelve hours prior to the commencement of 

 the constitutional disturbance. When the inflammation is 

 simply located in the skin it is not, considering the covermg 

 and })igmentation, easy to observe the first indications of dis- 

 turbance, consisting of simple redness, which disappears on 

 pressure, to return immediately the pressure is removed ; how- 

 ever, the roughness and perceptible elevation above the 

 surrounding surface is easily enough detected, as also the 

 oozing of serum, or the existence of vesicles filled with serous 

 or sero-purulent fluid. Even when the skin is chiefly or 

 entirely the seat of the inflammation, if it be supported on 

 an abundance of connective-tissue there will be oedema from 

 serous infiltration, although the connective- tissue itself is not 

 involved. 



In the ceUulo-cutaneous variety, which is f»robably the most 

 commonly met with in the horse — indeed there is some doubt 

 whether in him the skin is ever, in a pure and uncomplicated 

 form, the seat of this morbid action, but is not in every form 

 complicated with the invasion more or less of the subjacent cel- 

 lular tissue — the eftusion into the subdermal connective struc- 

 ture is at first purely serous, and consequently the swelling 

 resulting from this infiltration pits easily on pressure, the 



