8 HIPPOPATHOLOGY. 



prevail most during the autumnal and winter seasons ; that 

 bowel complaints occur oftener in summer than in winter; 

 and that this latter observation is still more applicable to 

 disorders of the brain and eyes. 



The form of disease is to be considered. With young 

 horses — horses at the critical period of their lives, four and 

 five years old — catarrh and bronchitis, the latter ending 

 at times in broncho-pneumonia or pleuro-pneumonia, or else 

 assuming the membranous type (pleurisy) altogether, — is the 

 usual form in which destructive disease presents itself at 

 this period of life ; and on occasions it is quite surprising in 

 what short a space of time, and how readily, through some 

 fatal mistake perhaps in the treatment, the animal is hurried 

 out of life. 



The comparative fatality of diseases, which consti- 

 tutes yet another link that may be usefully appended to this 

 chain of pathological inquiry, is thus sufficiently accounted for. 

 Searching for the deaths in the " Register,^' from which the 

 foregoing tables have been compiled, we find — 



Deaths from Pulmonary Disease 77 



Deaths from other Diseases (Glanders and Farcy and Accidents 

 excepted) 57 



According to this calculation, pulmonary disease carries off 

 more horses than all other maladies besides, setting glanders 

 and farcy out of the computation. It must not, however, 

 be imderstood that, because more horses die from pulmonary 

 diseases than from all or any other, ergo^ in reference to the 

 diseases themselves, separately considered, that they are the 

 most fatal : on the contrary, pneumonia (for example) is not 

 of itself so dangerous a disease as enteritis ; for, were 

 horses so obnoxious to one as they are to the other, more 

 would certainly die from the latter than from the former. 

 The predominance of pulmonary disease, among men as well 

 as horses, is to be ascribed to the variableness of the climate 

 we inhabit, and the continual vicissitudes of temperature we 

 are all in consequence necessarily exposed to; against the 

 effects of which it has been found next to impossible to 

 protect our own bodies, much less those of our horses. 



