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 losv, 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- 
tinctiy traceable to the third generation. But, although yrease 
is undoubtedly hereditary, and is, therefore, readily induced by 
comparatively simple causes, still it is frequently caused, and is 
always aggravited, by neglect of cleanliness; and of this there is 
ample evidence in the fact that it is most common in foul and 
badly-managed tables, 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, 
ete. The same author, just quoted, says in reference to scrofula: 
“From their weak and unsound constitution, horses of a sercf- 
alous 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 o1 vitiated 
constitution. It is emphatically the disease which cuts < all 
horses that have had their vital energies reduced below 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 thet 
syphilis, the analagous discase in the human subject, is congenital, and 3ftea 
eppears at birth in the children of women affected by that disease.” 
