77 2 MIDLAND COUNTIES VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
one of these valuable little 'instruments I early possessed myself, 
and soon found that not only was it useful in demonstrating the 
inception or presence of the “ Steppe disease,” but that it indicated 
an equal increase of animal heat during the incrementation of 
contagious pleuro-pneumonia*; I also found that the increase of heat 
above the normal amount belonging to each class of animal we are 
called to attend, is an invariable accompaniment of imflammatory 
disease, as well as those of a contagious epizootic character ; but 
that so great an increase does not accompany sporadic as it does 
disease of a zymotic type. Hence the thermometer becomes a sure 
diagnostic aid in distinguishing contagious pleuro-pneumonia from 
those sporadic affections with which it has often been confounded. 
Suppose then an animal has received the infection, the virus of 
contagious pleuro-pneumonia ; and most probably it will have 
received it through inhalation ; organic matter has been partaken of, 
that will at once proceed to reproduce itself, and in a variable time, 
say from two to twelve weeks, will have perfectly pervaded the 
infected animals’ system. During the latter part of this period 
another series of changes would appear to be inaugurated ; inflam- 
matory fever is gradually induced, which for the first week or ten 
days of its existence only appears to give a stimulus or flip to all 
the functions of animal life ; it takes possession of every part of the 
system as evidenced by the thermometer indicating a slight increase 
of temperature in every part. How often have we all been told 
that our new patient has been feeding, milking, or growing better 
than usual ; and, if the case is a barren cow, that she was in 
cestum last week ; during all this time, however, the animal has been 
showing signs of bronchial irritation, by a cough which appears 
to be increasing every day, and I have no doubt that during this 
gradually increasing inflammatory condition the animal suffers from 
shivering fits and exacerbations of the now rapidly developing 
malady, until some evening the creature is so ill that its sick- 
ness is apparent to any bystander. It is now that veterinary 
aid is invoked. 
We now find the animal with a staring coat, excited and anxious 
countenance, quick breathing with or without a grunt, both the 
breathing and the grunting painfully increased by a short sharp 
run, bowels slightly costive, secretion of urine scanty, and if a 
cow little or no milk, and a pulse, not as Professor Gamgee says, full 
and frequent, but small and frequent, 80 or more per minute. The 
pulse at this stage and up to the full incrementation of the disease 
always gives me the idea of a small stream forcing its way through 
a contracted inelastic tube ; in fact I have long thought a contagious 
pleuro-pneumonia pulse to be very constant in character. The 
lining membrane of the nose will often have dark bluish patches on 
it, but in every case you will find the nasal cartilages have a peculiar 
spasmodic action at each inspiration ; you will find also the elbows 
projecting and the caput muscles trembling ; the cough is short, 
suppressed, unsonorous, and painful ; percussion gives evidence of 
pleuritic pain as well as dulness of sound over some portion of the 
