Among Horses in India. 57 



I never could discover the cause of these sores, and all the 

 suggestions of Inspecting veterinary surgeons and others as to 

 their origin were shown to be wrong by various facts connected 

 with their history. Some attributed them to the horses' 

 mouths being scorched through the bits of the watering-bridles 

 becoming heated by the sun before they were put on. This 

 idea was proved to be incorrect in a battery to which I was 

 attached, by the sores appearing when the bridles were care- 

 fully kept in the shade, and also by their healing when no 

 change whatever was made in the usual disposition of the 

 bridles. 



There were some trees called sissu growing close to the 

 stables, and bursting into bloom at the time when the sores 

 appeared. I thought that possibly the pollen falling from 

 the iiowers might prevent accidental abrasions on the lips 

 from healing ; but on introducing it into a wound it had no 

 effect whatever. 



The following year when I had left the battery, the com- 

 manding officer wrote informing me that the sores appeared 

 again at the commencement of the hot season, resisted all 

 treatment as before, and again healed spontaneously at the 

 end of several weeks. 



Chibee. 



There is a skin disease which I have never heard of out of 

 India, to which horses are liable if turned on to long grass 

 during the rainy season or at the time when heavy dews 

 are falling. It is called chiber by the natives of India, and 

 in its early stage resembles herpes, except that it will not, 

 like that disease, get well without treatment. 



Chiber consists of an eruption of small vesicles round the 

 coronets for an inch or more above the hoofs, and sometimes 

 extending into the heels. These vesicles burst, and if not 

 properly treated form a raw surface which may be weeks and 

 months in healing. In some cases this surface becomes, after 

 a time, covered with hairless skin so hard and thick that it 

 resembles frog-horn. 



The disease occurs only in horses whose legs are left to get 



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