190 SPECIAL EQUINE THERAPY 



DOUBINE 



Dourine, also called mal du coit, is a disease of horses 

 that interests the practicing veterinarian chiefly from the 

 standpoint of diagnosis, its treatment having been dis- 

 countenanced by legal enactment. Dourine is probably 

 the only true venereal disease of which horses are the 

 subjects. It is characterized by local manifestations in 

 the generative organs, with subsequent development of 

 various degrees of paresis and disturbances of nervous 

 function generally. 



The infection is transmitted almost entirely in coitus. 

 The infecting agent is the Trypanosoma equiperdum. 

 Trypanosomic infections are usually associated with hot 

 climates, and the fact that dourine affects horses ia cold 

 climates also stamps it as one of the rare infections occur- 

 ring in the United States. 



Because of the infrequent occurrence of this disease in 

 the United States, there were, until the last occurrence 

 in the Northwestern states, comparatively few veterina- 

 rians in this country who were considered qualified to 

 make a diagnosis of dourine clinically. I recall an in- 

 stance that occurred in the Southwest, in the MesiUa 

 Valley, in which even one of these qualified experts con- 

 fused a botryomycotic process on the sheath and penis 

 of a stallion with dourine. In another instance that 

 occurred in my experience as assistant to the state veter- 

 inarian of Texas, a series of experiments and postmortem 

 examinations, which were made chiefly for the purpose 

 of establishing a period of incubation for quarantine 

 enactment, resulted in blank. One of the men in charge 

 of the work was presumed to be an expert in the diagnosis 

 and postmortem identification of the disease because of 

 previous experience with it in other lands. From what I 



