INFLUOZA. 273 



occasionally escape, or, even when it appears in most of the stables of any 

 particular district, horses in barracks, regiilarly worked and moderately fed, 

 although far from being entu-ely exemj)t, are comparatively less frequently 

 affected. 



If it has been obsex'ved from the beginning, it will be found that the 

 attack is sudden, frequently ushered in by shivering, and that quickly 

 succeeded by acceleration of pulse, heat of mouth, staring coat, diminution 

 of appetite, painful but not hard cough, redness of the membrane of the 

 nose, swollen and weeping eye, dejected countenance — these are the 

 symptoms of catari-h. The leading characteristics are the typhoid or 

 debihtatrug character of the disease and the accompanying sore throat — and 

 the ease and certainty with which this sore throat is detected is remark- 

 able, for almost the slightest pressure of the finger and thumb on the larynx 

 or upper part of the windpipe, of which the animal would not take the 

 slightest notice when in health, will at once induce short, sore, and abrupt, or 

 a restrained, but e\'idently painful, attempt to cough : intense thirst is the 

 invariable accompaniment of this attack, and the struggles made to relieve 

 it are unpleasant to witness, the water returning by the nostril as fast as 

 it is taken into the mouth, the act of swallowing being too painful an effort 

 for the animal to persist in. This is the form under which the disease is 

 usually now seen. 



It clearly is not inflammation of the lungs ; for there is no coldness of 

 the extremities, no looking at the flanks, no stiff" immovable position, no 

 obstinate standing up. It is not simple catarrh ; for as early as the second 

 day there is evident debility. The horse staggers as he walks. 



It is inflammation of the respiratory passages generally. It commences 

 in the membrane of the nose, but it gradually involves the whole of the 

 respiratory apparatus. Before the disease has been estabHshed four-and- 

 twenty hours, there is sore throat. The horse quids his hay, and gulps 

 his water. There is no great enlargement of the glands ; the parotids are 

 a little tumefied, the submaxillary someAvhat more so, but not at all 

 equivalent to the degree of soreness. That soreness is excessive, and day 

 after day the horse will obstinately refuse to eat. Discharge from the 

 nose soon follows in considerable quantity: thick, very early purulent, and 

 sometimes foetid. The breathing is rather accelerated and laborious at the 

 beginning, but does not always increase with the progress of the disease 

 — nay, sometimes, a deceitful calm succeeds, and the pulse, quickened and 

 full at first, soon loses its firmness, and although it usually maintains its 

 unnatural quickness, yet it occasionally deviates from this, and subsides to 

 little more than its natui'al standard. The extremities continue to be 

 comfortably warm, or at least the tempei-ature is variable, and there is not 

 in the manner of the animal, or in any one symptom, a decided reference 

 to any particular part or spot as the chief seat of disease. 



Thus the malady proceeds for an uncertain period : occasionally for 

 several days — in not a fcAv instances through the whole of its course, and 

 the animal dies exhausted by extensive or general irritation : but in other 

 cases the inflammation assumes a local determination, and we have bron- 

 chitis or pneumonia, but of no very acute character, yet difficult to treat, 

 from the general debility with which it is connected. Sometimes there 

 are considerable swelHngs in various parts, as the chest, the beDy, the 

 extremities, and particularly the head. And when epidemic catari-h first 

 made its appearance in this country, in 1820-21, the leading symptom was 

 engorgement or swelling of the extremities, accompanied by great debihty 

 — the two fore-legs, the two hind-legs, or all four, would in the course of 

 anight be distended to three or four times their natural size — or the head 

 would receive the fii'st shock, swelling out of all shape, the nostrils 



T 



