477 



scourging the cattle of the same regions. The two diseases were con- 

 founded with each other, and were, by the scientists of the day, allied to 

 the typhus, which was a jilague to the human race at the same time. We 

 find the first advent of this disease to the British Islands in an epi- 

 zootic among the horses of London and the southern counties of Eng- 

 land, in 1732, which is described by Gibson. In 1758, Robert Whytt 

 recounts the devastation of the horses of the north of Scotland from the 

 same trouble. Throughout the eighteenth century a number of epizootics 

 occurred in Hanover and other portions of Germany and in France, 

 which were renewed early in the. present century, with complications 

 of the intestinal tract, which obtained for it its name of gastro-enteritis. 

 In 17G6 it first attacked the horses in North America, but is not de- 

 scribed as again occurring in a severe form until 1870-1872, when it 

 spread over the entire country, from Canada south to Ohio, and then 

 eastward to the Atlantic and westward to California. It is now a per- 

 manent disease in our large cities, selecting for the continuance of its 

 virulence young or especially susceptible horses which pass through 

 the large and ill-ventilated and uncleaned dealers' stables and assumes, 

 from time to time, an enzootic form, as from some reason its virulence 

 increases, or as from reasons of rural economy and commerce large num- 

 bers of young and more susceptible animals are exi^osed to its conta- 

 gion. 



Etiology. — As one attack is self-protective, numbers of old horses, 

 having had an earlier attack, are not capable of contracting it again; 

 but, aside from this, young horses, especially those about four or five 

 years of age, are much more predisposed to be attacked, while the older 

 ones, even if they have not had the disease, are less liable to it. Again, 

 the former age is that in which the horse is brought from the farm, 

 where it has been free from the risk of contamination, and is sold to 

 pass through the stables of the country taverns, the dirty, infected 

 railway cars, and the foul stockyards and damp dealers' stables of our 

 large cities. Want of training is a predisposing cause. Overfed, fat, 

 young horses, which have just come through the sales stables, are much 

 more susceptible to contagion than the same horses are after a few 

 months of steady work. 



Pilger, in 1805, was the first to recognize infection as the direct cause 

 of the disease. Roll and others studied the contagiousness of influenza, 

 and finding it so much more virulent and permanent in old stables than 

 elsewhere classed it as a " stall miasm." The atmosphere is the most 

 common carrier of the infection from sick animals to healthy ones, and 

 through it it may be carried for a consi<lerable distance. The contagion 

 will remain in the straw bedding and droppings of the animal, and in 

 the feed in an infected stable, for a considerable time, and if these are 

 removed to other localities it may be carried in them. It may be car- 

 ried in the clothing of tl'ose who have been in attendance on horses 

 sufiering from the disease. The drinking water in troughs and even 



