2o8 Veterinary Medicine. 



the excretion of carbonic acid is usually so great as to counter- 

 balance the tendency of warm air to reduce the production of this 

 acid. This saturation, therefore, with water, increases the danger 

 of suffocation by the accumulation of the irrespirable carbon 

 dioxide in the ship, unless the air is being constantly removed. 



"Second. The excess of moisture in the warm atmosphere 

 hastens the decomposition of the organic matter derived from the 

 lungs, skin, and manure. Sir Alexander Armstrong, head of the 

 medical department of the British Navy, says : ' There can be no 

 more fertile source of disease among seamen, or, indeed, other 

 persons, than the constant inhalation of a moist atmosphere, 

 whether sleeping or waking ; but particularly is this influence 

 injurious when the moisture exists between a ship's decks, where 

 it may be at the same time more or less impure, and hot or cold, 

 according to circumstances. ' It has become an aphorism with 

 sanitarians that ' a damp ship is an unhealthy ship, ' and many 

 instances are adduced in which a sufficient renewal of the air be- 

 tween decks, with or without stoves to dry it, has transformed 

 a naval pest-house into a salubrious vessel. 



' ' All such considerations must emphasize the demand for such 

 a constant renewal of air between decks on steamers carrying 

 cattle, as shall serve to obviate all those conditions of ill-health, 

 with congestion and inflammation of the lungs, as have proved in 

 the past a serious drawback to our foreign cattle-trade. To ac- 

 complish this and at once remove from between decks the excess 

 of carbon dioxide, of decomposing organic matter, and of humid- 

 ity, and to furnish air approaching in purity and dryness that of 

 the atmosphere outside, we can conceive of nothing more simple 

 and effective than thorough ventilation by fan or heat extraction, 

 as referred to below." Report of the United States Treasury 

 Cattle Commission, 1882. 



The above quotations were written with special reference to 

 cattle, but the author reproduces them here as in principle appli- 

 cable to horses as well. 



In both horses and cattle treated as above it is common to find 

 ingesta in the bronchia drawn in during the violent paroxysms 

 of coughing. Here we have a direct mechanical irritant and a 

 means of septic infection, highly calculated to induce unhealthy 

 broncho-pneumonia. Williams quotes the case of a horse in 



