ELEPHANTIASIS. 237 
III. 
ELEPHANTIASIS. 
Elephantiasis is not a simple morbid entity, but a lesion common to 
several affections. In animals we do not observe the enzdotic form that 
“human” physicians find in filariosis. The form which attacks horses 
corresponds to that known in man as Arabian elephantiasis. The disturb- 
ances of the venous or lymphatic circulation, or of both, are the ordinary 
causes. 
The onset of the disease varies: at times it occurs immediately after 
an attack of acute lymphangitis whose resolution has been incomplete ; 
at others it succeeds the local swellings accompanying suppurative lesions 
of the skin (furuncles, scratches), or at others seems to come at once 
without any apparent lesion of a venous or lymphatic nature, and develops 
slowly. In all cases the process consists in a “‘ hypertrophical fibrous der- 
matitis with sclerosis of the skin and connective tissue.” 
In horses, elephantiasis is especially common to the hind legs, localized 
on one or affecting both; it is also seen on the fore legs, or on other 
regions, principally the sheath or the lips. 
The diseased parts are the seat of a chronic phlegmasia which will 
not disappear. Besides the acute manifestations that may appear, the 
swelling is evenly hard and painless; it increases by rest and diminishes 
by exercise. In the hind legs, the hypertrophy is sometimes limited to 
the fetlock and the phalanges; often it extends to the fetlock, and in some 
cases goes higher, to the shank. Ordinarily, the swelling is uniform, the 
leg hypertrophied as a “regular cylinder,” the skin is tense, hard, 
smooth, without inflammatory spots or fissures or epidermic abrasion. 
Inflammatory manifestations may occur and abscesses develop in the thick- 
ness of the dermis. When the affection is old and the leg enlarged, 
projecting ridges are seen on the hock, fetlock and coronet. The affected 
leg may assume considerable size and weight ; in a case of elephantiasis 
of the hind leg ina horse, Siedamyrotzky has seen the hock measuring 
75 centimeters around and the fetlock 65. Burmeister has dissected one 
leg which was so large that the subtarsal region weighed 50 kilos (100 
pounds). 
Wounds of the extremities, scratches and lymphangitis are rarely 
complicated with elephantiasis when a wadded dressing immobilizes the 
region and prevents the soiling of the wounds and the chronic infamma- 
tion of the skin and connective tissue, 
