DISEASES OF HORSES 35 



bowels. This appliance is better than the more complicated and 

 expensive ones. Ordinary cold water or even ice-cold water is highly 

 recommended by many as a rectal injection for horses overcome by 

 the excessive heat of summer, and may be given by this simple pipe. 



(6) . This method of medication is especially useful in treating 

 local diseases of the genito-urinary organs. It finds its chief applica- 

 tion in the injection and cleansing of the uterus and vagina. For 

 this purpose a large syringe or the irrigator described above may be 

 used. 



(7). Injections directly into veins are to be practiced by med- 

 ical or veterinary practitioners only, as are probably some other 

 means of giving medicines intratracheal injections, etc. (Spl. Rpt. 

 Horse, Dept, Ag. 1911.) 



INFECTIOUS AND GENERAL DISEASES. 



STRANGLES. 

 (SYNONYMS: Distemper, colt-ill, catarrhal fever, one form of shipping fever.) 



This is an infectious disease of the horse, mule, and ass; seen 

 most frequently in young animals, and usually leaving an animal 

 which has had one attack protected from future trouble of the same 

 kind. It appears as a fever, lasting for a few days, with formation 

 of matter, or pus, in the air tubes and lungs, and frequently the 

 formation of abscesses in various parts of the body, both near the 

 surface and in the internal organs. It usually leaves the animal 

 after convalescence perfectly healthy and as good as it was before, 

 but sometimes leaves it a roarer or is followed by the development 

 of deep-seated abscesses, which may prove fatal. 



pauses. The cause of strangles is infection by direct contact 

 with an animal suffering from the disease, or indirectly through con- 

 tact with the discharges from an infected animal, or by means of 

 the atmosphere in which an infected animal has been. There are 

 many predisposing causes which render some animals much more 

 subject to contract the disease than others. Early age, which has 

 given it the popular name of colt-ill, offers many more subjects than 

 the later periods of life do, for the animal can contract the disease but 

 once, ana the large majority of adult and old animals have derived 

 an immunity from previous attacks. At 3, 4, or 5 years of age the 

 colt, which has been at home, safe on a meadow or in a cozy barn- 

 yard, far from all intercourse with other animals or sources of con- 

 tagion, is first put to work and driven to the market town or county 

 fairs to be exposed to an atmosphere or to stables contaminated by 

 other horses suffering from disease and serving as infecting agents. 

 If it fails to contract it there, it is sold and shipped in foul, undisin- 

 fected railway cars to dealers' stables, equally unclean, where it 

 meets many opportunities of infection. If it escapes so far, it reaches 

 the time for heavier work and daily contact on the streets of towns 

 or large cities, with numerous other horses and mules, some of which 

 are sure to be the bearers of the germs of this or some other infectious 

 disease, and at last it succumbs. 



