SYMPTOMS. 77 



(i!*ogether, the prevalence of pulmonary affections in every vaned stage ought 

 no longer to be matter of surprise to any person, however casually he may 

 look at the matter. 



The horse is subject to cold or catarrh at every season of the year, and 

 some animals retain chronic cough all the year round, and some during their 

 natural lives. But the cold which is contracted in the spring differs materially 

 from that of the uutumn. The former attacks the animal when he is full of 

 hard meat and gross feeding — "full of humours," according to a homely but 

 intelligent phrase, and a malignant sore throat or an inflammation of the 

 lungs is the ultimate consequence, however slight the cold may have been at 

 first. Sometimes access of all those symptoms of diseased lungs, which I have 

 already or may hereafter take occasion to describe, will be found in the same 

 animal, and he usually bends before the complication of evils and dies, unless 

 speedily relieved by bleeding, &c. From its prevalence at some seasons, we 

 then agree to call it "epidemic," and to recommend a treatment corresponding 

 with the prevailing symptoms, if these be mild, as a simple cold ; which form 

 the epidemic fever or distemper always assumes in its earliest stages. On 

 the other hand, the cold or catarrh which the moulling animal acquires in au- 

 tumn, finds his system reduced by the heat and labour of summer; his blood, 

 in quality or quantity, is scarcely capable of being excited to inflammation, 

 and the first attacks are more easily subdued. Neglect, however, increases 

 the evil at all times, especially with the more valuable well-conditioned ani- 

 mals, some of which are so tenderly managed, that they scarcely can stand 

 the opening of a door or shutter after dark, without catching cold. Neither 

 autumn or winter is the season for remedying this defect in stable manage- 

 ment, — if ever it can be got over at all. 



Symptoms. — According to the precise part attacked, these vary not only as 

 to appearances, but as to virulence or malignity, always increasing as the com- 

 plaint descends lower and lower down towards the seat of vitality ; the danger 

 being also greatly augmented when the animal is pre-disposed to acquire 

 catarrh in its worst forms by some previous misfortune — as adhesion, &c. A 

 simple cold consists in slight inflammation of the membrane which hues the 

 nose, windpipe, &c. the functions of which membrane in health are described 

 in the 34th section, chap. ii. together with the manner in which the disease is 

 engendered. As we find in all other inflammatory disorders, variations in 

 the symptoms occur, according to the previous constitution or evils of the in- 

 dividual, and its actual condition — much more than is attributable to an ad- 

 verse season, or the immediate cause of disease. For example, if two equal 

 animals be exposed to a chilly night air, that horse which had performed a 

 journey previously to turning out, would catch a cold for certain, — the other 

 most probably would escape ; but, if both had performed the same journey, 

 let us suppose, and one of them laboured under the constitutional defect of 

 "adhesion of the pleura," (see page 32), he would acquire the more malignant 

 cold, known as "inflammation of the lungs," — his less unhappy mate a simple 

 cold. What horrid symptoms denote the former, 1 have attempted to describe ; 

 the simple cold, at its first appearance, is too well known to require minute 

 description. 



If the cold extend no farther than a check upon the mucous secretion of the 

 membrane that lines the nose, a purulent discharge is first observed in the 

 morning, its eyes become dull and a little bleared ; and, in twenty-four hours, 

 a short cough denotes that the inflammation is creeping onwards, and has 

 reached the epiglottis. The attack upon this point of conjunction between 

 the throat and mouth, will be greatly accelerated by the injury most horses 

 sustain which have been subjected to the brutal operation of beiug "coughed'* 



