INFLUENZA. 275 



It is most frequent in the spring of tlie year, but it occasionally rages in 

 autumn and in winter. It is epidemic ; it spreads over large districts. 

 It sometimes pervades tlie whole country. Scarcely a stable escapes. Its 

 appearance is sudden, its progress rapid. Mr. Wilkinson had thirty-six 

 new cases in one day. It is said that a celebrated practitioner in London 

 had nearly double that number in less than twenty-four hours. 



At other times it is endemic. It pervades one town ; one little tract of 

 country. It is confined to spots exceedingly circumscribed. It is dependent 

 on atmospheric agency, but this requires some injurious adjuvant, and the 

 principle of contagion may probably be called into play. It has been rife 

 enough in the lower parts of the metropolis, while in the upper and 

 north-western districts scarcely a case has occurred. It has occasionally 

 been confined to a locahty not extending half-a-mile in any direction. In 

 one of the cavalry barracks the majority of the horses on one side of the 

 yard were attacked by epidemic catarrh, while there was not a sick horse 

 on the other side. These prevalences of disease, with these exceptions, 

 are altogether unaccountable. The stables, and the system of stable 

 management, have been most carefully inquired into in the infected and 

 the healthy districts, and no satisfactory difierence could be ascertained. 

 One fact, however, has been established, and a very important one it is to 

 the horse proprietor as well as the practitioner. The probability of the 

 disease seems to be in proportion to the number of horses inhabiting the 

 stable. Two or three horses shut up in a comparatively close stable may 

 escape. Out of thirty horses, distributed through ten or fifteen small 

 stables, not one may be afiected ; but in a stable containing ten or twelve 

 horses the disease will assui-edly appear, although it may be proportionally - 

 larger and well ventilated. It is on this account that postmasters and 

 horse-dealers dread its appearance. In a sickly season their stables are 

 never free from it ; and if, perchance, it does enter one of their largest 

 stables, almost every horse will be affected. Therefore also it is that 

 grooms have so much dread of a distempered stable, and that the odds are 

 so seriously affected if distemper has broken out in a racing establishment. 



Does this lead to the conclusion that epidemic catarrh is contagious ? 

 Not necessarily, but it excites strong suspicion of its being so, and there arc 

 so many facts of the disease extending to nearly every animal in the stable, 

 that it has been considered both infectious and contagious. There are 

 many well-informed grooms, and extensive owners of horses, and living 

 much among them, and even veterinary surgeons of considerable prac- 

 tice, who have considerable doubt about the matter — they lose sight, 

 however, of the fact, that there is in reality no occasion to fly to either 

 infection or contagion to explain this. In a stable of twenty horses the 

 same cause that affects one may, and sometimes does, affect the other 

 nineteen, or any intermediate number ; knowing this to be the cause, why 

 look for adventitious causes when the same malaria, or whatever else 

 3'ou may please to call it, may equally prostrate one, one score, or one 

 hundred ? 



With regard to the treatment of epidemic catarrh there should not be 

 any considerable difficulty. It is a disease of the mucous membrane, and 

 thus connected with much debility ; but it is also a disease of a febrile cha- 

 racter, and the inflammation is occasionally considerable. The veterinary 

 surgeon, therefore, must judge for himself. Is the disease in its earliest 

 stage marked by inflammatory action ? Is there much redness of the nasal 

 membrane ? much acceleration of the pulse ? some heaving of the flank ? 

 and, if so, must not blood be abstracted ? No, a thousand times no ! 

 Every drop lost may afterwards be wanted. May be ? — nay, most surely 

 will be wanted, and alas ! wanted in vain. The disease is a typhoid fever, 



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