Equine Influenza . Adynamic Catarrhal Fever of Solipeds. 1 39 



body temperature ; then a caouchouc tube furnished with a silver 

 tube at one end and sterilized as for transfusion of blood, is filled 

 with the solution and the vessel containing the latter having been 

 placed at a level higher than the patient, the tube is used as a 

 syphon. When the liquid flows in full stream the silver tube is 

 inserted downward into the jugular of the patient and the liquid 

 is allowed to flow in, subject to the same precautions as regards 

 sudden blood tension as in the case of the transfusion of blood. 



Prevention . No country appears to have attempted the abso- 

 lute exclusion of the disease or the extinction of the germ by a 

 compulsory quarantine and disinfection. The nearest approach 

 to this is in Prussia where in the event of an outbreak of equine 

 influenza, the official veterinarians and police authorities must 

 send in reports to be published in the official papers and com- 

 municated to the directors of government breeding studs and to 

 the army authorities. We have here the germ of an effective 

 system of extinction, for if those in charge of government horses 

 in an infected country can protect them against infection, much 

 more could such protection be secured by putting an end to the 

 infection which is now allowed to remain generalized. More- 

 over in our great outbreak of 1872-3, when germ-potency and 

 all but universal susceptibility were so remarkable, effective 

 quarantine showed the most signal successes, in the resulting 

 immunity of Vancouver's Island, Prince Edward Island, the 

 whole of the West Indies except Cuba, Central and South 

 America, and isolated districts in Mexico. 



Sanitary police in this disease has been abandoned mainly be- 

 cause the virus is so diffusive on the air that quarantine must be 

 more than usually comprehensive to prevent extension of 

 infection, and because the disease is fatal only in a small 

 percentage of cases, so that the loss is apparently minimized. 

 But a panzootic like that of 1872-3, prostrating 1,000,000 horses, 

 asses and mules in the United States for one to two weeks, and 

 paralyzing the agriculture and commerce of the continent for 

 that length of time, may well make one hesitate to supinely ac- 

 cept for all time an evil, which, experience has shown, can be 

 circumscribed and stamped out. When horse owners, legislatures 

 and veterinarians can be educated up to the needs of the case our 

 3^early local losses from equine influenza, and the occasional all 



