24 DADD'S VETERINARY MEDICINE AND SURGERY. 



sire. They have all been found liable to swelled legs when they 

 stand idle for a few days; most of them have been the subjects of 

 repeated attacks of weed; all are affected, particularly in spring, 

 with scurfiness of the skin of the hind extremities and excessive 

 itchiness, and lose, at a very early age, their flatness and smooth- 

 ness of limb. The faults occur, to a greater or less degree, in all 

 the stock of this horse, by many different mares, and are dis- 

 tinctly traceable to the third generation. But, although grease 

 is undoubtedly hereditary, and is, therefore, readily induced by 

 comparatively simple causes, still it is frequently caused, and is 

 always aggravated, by neglect of cleanliness ; and of this there is 

 ample evidence in the fact that it is most common in foul and 

 badly-managed ttables, and where no pains are taken to keep the 

 horses' feet and legs clean and dry." 



The scrofulous predisposition is very marked in certain breeds 

 of horses ; it occasions rickets, softening, deformity, and various 

 forms of disease in the bones, as, for example, big head, big jaw, 

 etc. The same author, just quoted, says in reference to scrofula : 

 " From their weak and unsound constitution, horses of a scrof- 

 ulous diathesis are unusually prone to glanders and farcy — two 

 forms of a disease peculiar (at least as an original disease) to the 

 equine species. As has been already remarked, it is characterized 

 by a specific unhealthy inflammation, identical in all important 

 characteristics with the syphilitic inflammation in man. From the 

 dire and loathsome nature of glanders, and the terror in which it 

 is held, animals affected by it are never used for breeding, so that 

 we have little opportunity of judging of its hereditary nature. 

 There is no evidence (so far as I know) which proves it to be di- 

 rectly hereditary,* but there is no doubt that the progeny of a 

 glanderous horse would exhibit an unusually strong tendency to 

 the disease. Its ordinary predisposing causes are, many of them, 

 hereditary ; it is very prone to attack animals of a weak or vitiated 

 constitution. It is emphatically the disease which cuts :& all 

 horses that have had their vital energies reduced belcw the 

 healthy standard, either by inherent or acquired causes. Glan- 



* "Though I am not aware of *ny facts proving glanders to be congenital, yet 

 I think there is every probabili y that such is the case ; for it is notorious that 

 syphilis, the analagous disease in the human subject, is congenital, and :>fteu 

 appears at birth in the children of women affected by that disease." 



