Dourine 763 



dourine and genital horse pox, a condition which still con- 

 tinues in many descriptions of the malady. 



The most reliable local symptoms for the diagnosis of 

 dourine in the stallion consists of the doughy, elastic swell- 

 ing of the prepuce, with varying degrees of penial paralysis, 

 the penis hanging somewhat out of its sheath, usually re- 

 tained within the prepuce. The urethral opening is usually 

 inflamed and a slight discharge escapes from it, but there 

 is nothing visible to the naked eye to mark this as differing 

 from lesions of these parts due to other causes. 



Later a depigmentation of the penis and prepuce may 

 occur — not in small circular spots, as in genital horse pox, 

 but in large, irregular patches, which gradually spread from 

 the periphery. In the mare, the most important local symp- 

 toms for purposes of diagnosis consist of the doughy, edema- 

 tous swelling of the vulvar lips, the enlargement of the 

 clitoris, the gaping of the vulva at its inferior commissure, 

 and the depigmentation of the clitoris and its prepuce, and 

 of the skin of the vulva, perineum and anus. 



Once it is decided that an equine venereal disease exists in 

 a stud, the presence or absence of specific pustules or vesicles 

 may serve largely to differentiate between the two maladies. 

 Eruptions upon the external genitals may, of course, occur 

 in dourine, but those writers who have mentioned them uni- 

 formly fail to describe them in a manner to enable one to 

 differentiate those of dourine from those of genital horse 

 pox, and, as a rule, it might well be suspected that such 

 descriptions are based upon diagnostic error. In some cases, 

 doubtless, erosions or ulcers have appeared as the result of 

 irritation from ichorous discharges or from the accumula- 

 tions of filth about the genitals, accompanied by low vitality 

 in the cutaneous tissues, but such eruptions are devoid of 

 diagnostic value, and their relation to the disease, so far as 

 we know, is quite secondary. 



Specific eruptions of vesicles or pustules upon the genitals 

 do not occur. When abundant and specific eruptions occur 

 on the genitals of the horse, they indicate genital horse pox, 

 not dourine. 



