44 



Liflammatioii of the Joints in Sucking Foals. 



There is a paper in the Recueil DE MeDECINE VeTeRINAIRE 

 for March 1828, by a M. Benand, then a veterinary surgeon at 

 Boulogne, giving an account of a disease of the joints of foals, con- 

 sisting in a sudden attack of inflammation, soon after their dams 

 are taken again to plough ; the joints commonly affected being the 

 knee and fetlock before, the hock and fetlock behind, and the dis- 

 ease in some cases proving fatal. M. Benand ascribes it to some 

 change the milk of the dam undergoes through her being taken to 

 hard work. " For the first day or two," says M. Benand, " there is 

 nothing to be seen or felt ; but about the third day both heat and 

 tumefaction become apparent. And now the animal is constantly 

 lying down, being unable to bear any weight upon its limbs. Loss 

 of appetite, fever, and dyspnoea, follow. And although about the 

 fourth or fifth day the local inflammatory signs abate, it frequently 

 happens that about the sixth day the colt dies from metastasis of 

 inflammation either upon the lungs or bowels." — " The disease," 

 adds M. Benand, " evidently originates from the mare. Should 

 one of her foals have it, those in succession will rarel}' escape, un- 

 less suckled by a mare free from the contamination." 



This paper of M. Benand's, which was transcribed into the first 

 volume of The Veterinarian four years afterwards, received 

 confirmation from the pen of Mr. Pritchard, veterinary surgeon, 

 Wolverhampton, who (in the fifth volume of the same journal) wrote 

 a fuller and highly interesting paper on the subject, from which we 

 shall take the liberty here to make an extract. 



Mr. Pritchard informs us he has " several times witnessed the 

 destructive affection ;" that " the joints are attacked with acute 

 inflammation, which, by metastasis, moves from one joint to an- 

 other, and from one limb to another;" and '* thinks, with M. Be- 

 nand, that it arises from colts sucking the mares when they return 

 from work* ; from some change in the milk, probably produced by 



* Query — Did these foals run with their dams at work ? and, if they did, 

 had this unnatural or forced exercise of their tender joints any thing to do 



with the prorluction of inflammation in them? 



