CHAPTER VIII. 



Common Diseases of the Skin 



ERYTHEMA 



Acute inflammation of the skin, attended with eruptions and 

 small pimples or pustules, common to all classes of horses in hot 

 weather. 



This is a congested or slightly inflammed condition of the skin, 

 unattended by any eruption. The part is lightly swollen, hot, tender 

 or itchy, and dry, and if the skin is white there is redness. The 

 redness is effaced by pressure, but reappears instantly when the 

 pressure is removed. Unless in transient cases the hair are liable 

 to be shed. It may be looked on as the first stage of inflammation 

 and therefore when it becomes aggravated it may merge in part 

 or in whole into a papular, vesicular, or pustular eruption. 



Erythema may arise from a variety of causes and is often named 

 in accordance with its most prominent cause. Thus the chilling, or 

 partial freezing, of a part will give rise to a severe reaction and 

 congestion. Where snow or icy streets have been salted this may 

 extend to severe inflammation with vesicles, pustules, or even 

 sloughs of circumscribed portions of the skin of the pastern (chill- 

 blain, frostbite). Heat and burning have a similar effect, and this 

 often comes from exposure to the direct rays of the sun. The skin 

 that does not perspire is the most subject and hence the white face 

 or white limb of a horse becoming dried by the intensity of the sun's 

 rays often suffers to the exclusion of the rest of the body (white face 

 and foot disease). The febrile state of the general system is also a 

 ])otent cause, hence the white-skinned horse is rendered the more 

 liable if kept on a heating ration of buckwheat, or even of wheat or 

 maize. Contact of the skin with oil of turpentine or other essential 

 oils, with irritant liquids, vegetable or mineral, with rancid fats, 

 with the acrid secretions of certain animals, like the irritated toad, 

 with pus, sweat, tears, urine, or liquid feces, will produce congestion 

 of even inflammation. Chafing is a common cause, and is especially 

 liable to affect the fat horse between the thighs, by the side of the 

 sheath or scrotum, on the inner side of the elbow, or where the har- 

 ness chafes on the poll, shoulder, back, breast-bone, and under the 

 tail. The accumulation of sweat and dust between the folds of the 

 skin and on the surface of the harness, and the specially acrid char- 



