138 THK HORSB. 



tract, causing constipation and consecutive diarrhea. Special care must 

 be taken for some weeks not to expose the animal to cold. 



Strangles, Distemper or Catarrhal Fever. This is an infectious 

 disease seen most frequently in j-oung animals, and usually leaving an ani- 

 mal which has one attack protected from future trouble of the same kind. 

 It appears as a fever, lasting for a few days, with formation of matter or 

 pus in the air tubes and lungs, and frequently the formation of abscesses 

 in various parts of the body, both near the surface and in the internal 

 organs. It usually leaves the animal after convalescence perfectly 

 healthy and as good as it was before, but sometimes leaves it a roarer, or 

 is followed by the development of deep-seated abscesses which may 

 prove fatal. 



Causes. The cause of strangles is infection by direct contact with 

 an animal suffering from the disease, or indirectly through contact with 

 the discharges from an infected animal, or by .means of the atmosphere 

 in which an infected animal has been. There are many predisposing 

 causes which render some animals much more subject to contract the 

 disease than others. Early age, which has given it the popular name of 

 colt-ill, offers many more subjects than the later periods of life do, for 

 the animal can contract the disease but once, and the large majority of 

 adult and old animals have derived an immunity from previous at- 

 tacks. At three, four, or five years of age the colt, which has been at 

 home, safe on a meadow or a cozy barnyard, far from all intercourse with 

 other animals or sources of contagion, is first put to work and driven to 

 the market town or county fairs to be exposed to an atmosphere or to 

 stables contaminated by other horses suffering from disease and serving 

 as infecting agents. If it fails to contract it there, it is sold and shipped 

 in foul, undisinfected railway cars, to dealers' stables, equally unclean, 

 where it meets many opportunities of infection. If it escapes so far, it 

 reaches the time for heavier work and daily contact on the streets of 

 towns or large cities, with numerous other horses and mules, some of 

 which are sure to be the bearers of the germs of this or some other infec- 

 tious disease, and at last it succumbs. 



The period of the eruption of the last permanent teeth, or the end of 

 the period of development from the colt to an adult horse, at which time 

 the animals usually have a tendency to fatten and be excessively full- 

 blooded, also seems to be a predisposing period for the contraction of this 

 as well as of the other infectious diseases. Thoroughbred colts are very 

 susceptible, and frequently contract strangles at a somewhat earlier age 



