HORSE SICKNESS. 465 



SYMPTOMS. — Dr. Edington, Director of the Colonial Bacturio- 

 logical Institute, Cape Colony, who is the great authority on this 

 subject, states that the first symptom of the lung form of horse 

 sickness is a shivering fit, with a rise of temperature up to 103.1° 

 F. in the evening; that the temperature next morning is lower, 

 though not quite normal, and rises still more in the evening ; and 

 that it thus steadily, though slowly, increases until within a few 

 hours of death, when it may fall below the normal standard. 

 Before this fall, the temperature reaches to a considerable height. 

 As a rule, the appetite is well maintained up to the last day. 

 Towards the end, there ns a great congestion of the blood vessels; 

 the mucous membrane of the eyes and nose assumes a dark red 

 colour; and a copious interlobular effusion takes place in the 

 lungs. The breathing becomes extremely hurried, often about 75 

 in the minute, with heaving of the flanks. Depression is well 

 marked ; and there is an escape, from the bronchial tubes, of 

 watery fluid, which becomes mixed with mucus. The presence of 

 this fluid, even before ajay discharge takes place from the nostrils, 

 can be readily detected by the bubbling sound which may be heard 

 by applying the ear to the front of the chest. As this fluid acc- 

 mulates more and more in the bronchial tubes, it is discharged 

 from the nostrils, usually in large quantities, and in a somewhat 

 frothy condition, which it soon loses if it be allowed to collect on 

 the ground. The fluid may trickle from the nostrils, or may be 

 discharged in streams. Although I have never measured the quan- 

 tity of this poured-out fluid in a fatal case, I think it would be 

 about three or four pints. Quantities of this maiterial have been 

 caught in glass vessels, when it appears as a straw-coloured fluid, 

 but it is spontaneously coagulable in the presence of minute traces 

 of blood. It is coagulated by heat, and has been found to consist 

 almost entirely of blood plasma. One very characteristic symptom 

 is the distension or bulging of the pits above the eyes. The froth 

 that is discharged from the nostrils is produced by the plasma 

 which has transuded into the bronchial tubes and air-cells of the 

 lungs, and is somewhat similar in composition to the white of an 

 egg, becoming whipped-up into foam by the breathed-in air. To 

 use our authority's happy expression, the animal is praoticaOy 

 drowned in its own blood serum. 



The disease runs a fatal course, usually in about four days, 

 taking the period of incubation at about eight days. During the 

 first two days of the attack, there is little to attract casual atten- 

 tion. The lining membrane of the eyelids has invariably pectinal 

 (comb-like) or stellate (star-shaped) blood spots on it. As a rule, 

 the patient dies very suddenly, frequently within an hour or two 

 of the time he was first seen to be ill The general idea in South 



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