ReairreJit Ophthalmia in Solipeds. Moonblindness. 405 



overflowed and constantly wet, hollow basins where no effective 

 drainage has been secured, and the coasts of seas and lakes which 

 scarcel}' rise above the level of the water and are submerged at 

 intervals, are the especial homes of the affection. In time past the 

 disease was ver3' prevalent in the low districts of France (Reynal), 

 Belgium, Alsace-L/Oraine (Zundel, Miltenberger, ) Germany, Hol- 

 land (Moller), the English fen country and above all the damp 

 lands of Ireland. Lafosse mentions a whole family of horses in 

 South Western France which were characterized by blindness. 

 Reynal records the terrible devastation which it caused in former 

 times in the government studs at Limousin and Pompadour. It 

 also prevails on the low banks of the Guadalquivir near Seville 

 (Hurtrel d'Arboval), around Ostend, Cassel and Frankfort (Hof- 

 geismar). Wet soils surrounded by forests or hills, which hinder 

 free circulation of air, are especially injurious (Reynal). At 

 Schlestadt, Alsace, at the beginning of this century, Miltenberger 

 found 75 per cent, of the horses of the environs affected, whereas 

 after great drainage works and the removal of all stagnant water 

 Zundel found in 1870 not more than 2 per cent. In many locali- 

 ties in England, Ireland, France, Belgium and Germany the dis- 

 ease has greatly diminished in connection with land drainage and 

 improved methods of culture. Harmon tells how in different 

 parts of Brittany, drainage supplemented by the free use of marl 

 and lime on the soil has caused a striking decrease in the pre- 

 valence of the malady. In the department of Ain a ratio of 333 

 per iooo was thus reduced to 100 per 1000 (Reynal. ) On the 

 contrary in the aljsence of such drying of the soil the previous 

 high ratio of attacks was maintained. This has been notorious 

 in the damp lands of Northern France and Belgium (Picardy, 

 Artois, Flanders, where it often reaches 40 to 70 per cent. Reynal) : 

 Alsace-Loraine, Holland, Hanover, Mecklenberg, North and 

 East Prussia, Eithuania, the low parts of Austria and Hungary 

 and the Danubian Principalities — Moldavia and Walachia. 



Reynal further shows that dealers are in the habit of taking 

 young horses, which have so far escaped, or which have suffered 

 but one moderate attack, away from the low damp soils of the low 

 Pyrenees or of the Jura Valley in France to the dry elevated lands 

 of Dauphiny, Provence and Lanquedoc in France, or to the 

 mountainous regions of Catalonia in Spain in the well justified 

 confidence that few of them will suffer a second attack. 



