# 



\ 



160 AMEKICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK. 



duced to a mere skeleton. As the disease advances, all these 

 symptoms are aggravated. The fever increases, the pulse 

 grows harder and more rapid, the eyes look dull and glassy, 

 the hair stands out, and has a dry, dead appearance, and the 

 head droops nearly all the time. The horse either refuses to 

 eat, or does so with great difficulty; he becomes exceed- 

 ingly stupid, and seems utterly woe-begone ; his whole con- 

 dition is wretched indeed. If an abscess does not form, he 

 is almost sure to die; and even when one is developed, it is 

 often of so fearful a character as itself to be the cause of 

 death. Occasionally, dreadful abscesses have been known 

 to gather on the belly, near the sheath, from the effects of 

 distemper. 



We have already said that this disease is very contagious. 

 Horses will take it from each other at considerable distances 

 apart. In glanders, infection proceeds from the nasal dis- 

 charges; but in distemper it is communicated by the fe- 

 verish breath, and much further than in the case of the 

 former. When distemper breaks out among a body of horses 

 or mules, all are likely to have it, except thoie who have 

 passed through it before ; for, like small-pox in the human 

 being, it never attacks a horse the second time. Colts 

 and young animals, who are especially subject to it, will 

 take it from older ones, but seldom communicate it to them. 

 Yet it will be folly to calculate upon any exemptions when 

 it breaks out in a stable none of whose inmates have ever 

 had it. • 



Like glanders and farcy, distemper is most frequently gen- 

 erated by filth and bad keeping. It is undoubtedly epidemic 

 in character, however ; but, like cholera, it is always most at 

 home in those localities where filth and miasma are most 

 abundant. Cleanliness may be set down as essential to a 

 cure. 



TREATMENT. 



The treatment, in its general features, resembles that for 

 glanders. Bleed in the neck vein, taking about three pints 



