44 



sponges, tow, cotton-wool, bandages, bottles and other 

 pharmacy utensils, twitches, histruments, necessaries, 

 wound dressings, etc. A few cases may infect them- 

 selves by contact, or, what is commoner, they may 

 infect themselves in one or more places additional to that 

 of the original seat of the disease, more especially on the 

 lips or mucous membrane of the nose and eyes — by 

 rubbing and biting, and in these cases generally acci- 

 dentally, in their attempts to remove flies from a wound 

 on themselves which is already the seat of the disease. 



Cases affecting the conjunctiva, with no external 

 symptom, save a slight discharge which passes unnoticed 

 for days, weeks, and even months, are most prolific in 

 spreading the disease, particularly in India, where the 

 native attendants go from horse to horse with dirty little 

 cloths (ccilledj ar/ians) wiping the horses' eyes and noses 

 and infecting them as they go along — in fact, I attributed 

 the spread of the disease in one outbreak, which I had 

 to deal with, to this same cause. As infection, 

 apparently, only takes place by the inoculation of 

 wounds, all those conditions which predispose animals 

 to wounds and abrasions also as a matter of course, 

 predispose to the development and spread of the 

 disease. Therefore, transmission is facilitated by 

 herding and co-habitation of animals, and this explains 

 why the disease is especially associated with army horses, 

 more particularly in remount depots, and also amongst 

 horses belonging to large companies. Anything that 

 retards the healing of wounds also predisposes to the 

 spread of the disease, and this fact, no doubt, 

 accounts for the disease being more prevalent in warm 

 climates, particularly in the rainy season, and in low- 

 lying and inundated districts, where flies are very 

 numerous, and where the healing of wounds is protracted 

 by exuberant granulations with a tendency to bursatti. 



