254 AMERICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK. 



The latter forms the only development of the disease With 

 which we are practically acquainted. It is this which is the 

 final cause of death in all fatal cases of the genuine blind 

 staggers of the South. Occasionally apoplexy is attended 

 by it, and acute rheumatism often produces slight cerebral 

 inflammation. 



A case of spontaneous inflammation or fever of the brain 

 we never saw. This form of the disease may occur in this 

 country, but it is certainly very unfrequent. It can not be 

 far wrong to characterize this as a European malady, and 

 here again let the Englishman* tell his own story: 



"Primary inflammation of the brain or its membranes, or 

 both, sometimes occurs, and of the membranes oftenest when 

 both are not involved. 



" Whatever be the origin of phrenitiB, its early symptoms 

 are scarcely different from those of apoplexy. The horse is 

 drowsy — stupid; his eye closes; he sleeps while he is in the 

 act of eating, and dozes until he falls. The pulse is slow 

 and creeping, and the breathing oppressed and laborious. 

 This is the description of apoplexy. The symptoms may 

 difter a little in intensity and continuance, but not much in 

 kind. 



" The phrenitic horse, however, is not so perfectly coma- 

 tose as another that labors under apoplexy. The eye will 

 respond a little to the action of light, and the animal is 

 somewhat more manageable, or, at least, more susceptible, for 

 he will shrink when he is struck^ while the other frequently 

 cares not for the whip. 



" In the duration of the early symptoms there is some 

 difference. If the apoplexy proceeds from distension of the 

 stomach, twenty-four or thirty-six hours will scarcely pass 

 without the cure being completed, or the stomach ruptured, 

 or the horse destroyed. If it proceeds more from oppression 

 of the digestive organs than from absolute distension of the 

 stomach, and from that sympathy which subsists between the 



*Youatt: American edition, p. 98. 



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