756 BULLOUS OR HERPETIC INFLAMMATIONS. 



These latter may be beneficial at other stages, but they seem 

 most distinctly indicated in this. The arsenic is conveniently 

 administered in powder with bicarbonate of potash, probably 

 two drachms of the alkali to two grains of the acid twice daily, 

 or simply as Fowler's solution, one table-spoonful, morning and 

 evening, in food or drinking-water. Carbolic acid, highly 

 spoken of by many, is good as an external application, but must 

 be used much diluted and with great care, and does not appear 

 to have aught to recommend it over the more common and safer 

 oil of tar, which, used in the proportion of two parts with one of 

 soft soap, and from ten to twenty of linseed oil, will be found 

 a good and cheap dressing. When this or any other prepara- 

 tion is used two or three times in succession, the whole ought 

 to be washed off' with soft soap and tej)id water, so as to ensure 

 the removal of the crust, should any form, and allow of the 

 immediate and direct application of the dressing to the skin 

 itself 



E. BULLOUS OR HERPETIC INFLAMMATIONS. 



In equine dermatology this subdivision of the inflammatory 

 diseases is a small one, and, with trifling violence to our sub- 

 ject, herpes, the only manifestation of the group in the horse, 

 might have been included in the catarrhal. The bullous or 

 herpetic group of skin diseases is characterized b}^ the presence, 

 as an essential phenomenon, of blebs, bullae or vesicles, these 

 not being, as in some other conditions, accidental but constant 

 features. 



The term herpes, we are aware, has been often and exten- 

 sively employed somewhat loosely. It has been used to 

 designate chronic skin diseases generally, and to indicate in 

 particular acute skin affisctions, attended with the formation 

 of vesicles in particular parts of the body, also to distinguish a 

 parasitic affection of a scaly nature developing in circular 

 patches, on which are situated small vesicles. 



Certainly the most characteristic manifestation of this 

 gi'oup of the inflammatory skin diseases of the horse is that 

 acute form known as erysipelas, in which large-sized blebs 

 or vesicles are encountered over the affected parts. This, 

 however, as a zymotic disease has been noticed already. The 

 only other form is herpes, which term we would restrict to a 



