Cerebrospinal Meningitis 119 



about 6,000 horses, mules and donkeys perished. Hence the 

 disease is known as epizootic cerebros pinal meningitis. But again 

 it is often seen in scattering or sporadic cases. Add to this that 

 no evidence has ever been adduced that the disease is communi- 

 cated from one animal to another, and in these days of the par- 

 allelism of epizootics and pathogenic microbes, we may well 

 hesitate about continuing to use such a qualifying term. Fried- 

 berger and Frohner claim ' ' that a large number of clinical facts 

 have been erroneously reported under the name of spasms of the 

 neck. Rabies, tubercular basilar meningitis, apoplexy, simple 

 encephalitis, and certain poisonings have been confounded with 

 that disease. ' ' They assure us that ' ' cold, damp, chilly weather, 

 hot stables, clipping and overfeeding are of but secondary im- 

 portance," but they fail absolutely to tell us what is oi primary 

 importance in a causative sense. American writers who have 

 attempted to account for the disease have groped somewhat 

 blindly for causes in the idea of poison. Large charged it on in- 

 sanitary conditions, poisonous gases, and defective sewerage in 

 cities, and lack of drainage and deficient stable ventilation in the 

 country. J. C. Michener attributes it to foods undergoing fer- 

 mentation and considers it as a paralysis due to toxic fungi. W. 

 L. WilUams, in Idaho, found the greatest number of cases in 

 winter had been fed hay made from alfalfa (lucerne) and 

 timothy, though some had small grains and native grasses. The 

 soil was dry, porous, gravelly, devoid of humus, and lying on 

 lava rock. The altitude and clearness of the atmosphere were 

 supposed to exclude the idea of cryptogams, yet the crops 

 generally were raised by irrigation. The water was from clear 

 mountain streams. Stables were generally low and full of 

 manure, with thatched roofs, but hardly tight enough to be 

 called close. In these cases the defective stable room, the irriga- 

 tion, the leafy hay (lucerne), and the probable presence of fer- 

 ments (bacteria), are the only suggestive conditions. In a fatal 

 outbreak which I saw among the Wilkesbarre, Pa., pit mules, 

 rain-soaked and badly fermented timothy hay, overwork in view 

 of a strike, and a Sunday's holiday in an unshaded yard under a 

 hot July sun, in contrast with the previous darkness and coolness 

 of the pits, coincided to disturb the general health. In several of 

 the Southern States it is attributed to worm-eaten corn. Trum- 



