220 l UK MODERN HOUSE DOCTOR. 



PUTRID FEVER. 



This disease is somewhat rare in this section of the United 

 States, but sometimes prevails to an alarming extent in the South- 

 western. The following communication was lately received by 

 the author from a veterinary surgeon of Pennsylvania : — 



" Buckingham, November 26, 1853. 



" Respected Friend : Agreeable to promise, I will now 

 endeavor to give you some of the causes, symptoms, diagnoses, 

 prognoses, and treatment of the disease that has recently been 

 prevailing, not only with your horses, but with many others, in 

 different sections of Bucks, Montgomery, and New Jersey — 

 with horses differently fed, exercised, stabled, and groomed, as is 

 common to arise from the different avocations and peculiar views 

 of their different owners. I have never attributed the disease 

 to any kind of feed, exercise, stabling, or grooming, particularly ; 

 but I attribute the remote cause of the disease to atmospheric 

 influence, and the proximate cause to debility, however induced. 

 This theory of the cause of the disease I will endeavor to give 

 you some reasons for. First, the disease has always prevailed 

 to a much greater extent in the fall of the year than at any 

 other time, when the weather is frequently changing from heat 

 to cold, and from cold to heat. 



" A change from cold to heat has a relaxing and debilitating 

 effect upon the whole system ; the perspiration flows freely on 

 the least exertion, showing great relaxation of the skin ; and 

 when the horse is in this relaxed condition, perhaps the weather 

 changes suddenly to a cold, damp, north-east wind. This change 

 makes a great demand upon the caloric of the system, or, in 

 other words, extracts a' great proportion of animal heat, closes 

 the pores of the skin, thereby throwing the perspiration back 

 upon the internal vital organs, which impedes their free, full, and 

 healthy functions — particularly so in the fall of the year, when 

 the horse is changing his summer for his winter coat, or what is 

 called the moulting. As the moulting is a process extending 

 over the whole of the skin, requiring a very considerable expen- 



