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Home Department, 
HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
A monthly meeting of the Society was held in the Museum 
Hall, on Wednesday, the 23d ult. Mr. Callander, of 
Preston Hall, in the chair. 
The Subject was — Influenza in Horses. 
Mr. Barlow, V.S., said — The subject of influenza in horses is submitted to 
your consideration this month for the following reasons: — 1. Tt is an affection of 
common occurrence, and occasionally prevails far more extensively and de- 
structively than most other diseases. 2. Many of you have suffered from its 
inroads, aggravated, it is to be feared, as these inroads have sometimes been, by 
improper treatment under your own or less competent hands. 3. It seems 
frequently to manifest a severer form in farm and other draught horses than 
among those of lighter breeds. 4. It has apparently obtained somewhat of a 
settlement among us ; so that a spring or autumn scarcely passes without some 
cases at least being observed. 5. A notice of the predisposing causes and treat- 
ment of this disease will involve some considerations regarding the domestic 
management of horses, — a subject of primary importance to you all. Influenza 
may be defined as an epizootic catarrhal disease, often accompanied by a low 
type of 'inflammation involving more or less extensively the organs of circulation 
and respiration ; sometimes those of digestion and locomotion also ; attended by 
fever of a typhoid nature, and great depression of the nervous system. The 
term influenza (the Italian word for influence) was originally applied to its 
present meaning in consequence of a once-prevailing belief that diseases as well 
as other terrestrial conditions and events, were caused by stellar and planetary 
influence. The. disease has also been, however, known by the various designations 
of horse-fever, epizootic or epidemic catarrh, catarrhal fever, and distemper. 
These latter names, indeed, were almost exclusively employed till within a 
comparatively recent period. The term influenza seems to have been currently 
used in veterinary nomenclature from the time that veterinary science was first 
systematically taught. We were early compelled to borrow much from the pre- 
existing science of human medicine, and, observing a disease among horses very 
similar to influenza in man, we appropriated this name. I fear we have now 
extended the application too widely by including various diseases under one 
designation. A recent veterinary author, more voluminous and theoretical than 
practical, makes the singular statement “ that influenza is the name nowa- 
days given to any disease prevailing epidemically (epizootically), attacking great 
numbers of horses about the same time, in various localities and situations, 
without any regard, so long as the disease in all or most of them be the same, 
to what happens to be its nature, or even to what organs or parts of the body 
are attacked by it.” (‘The Veterinarian,’ Aug. 1845, p.477.) According 
to this, any disease whatever may be called influenza, provided it possess the 
property of wide extension. In calling different ailments by the same name, 
however, our descriptions of diseases become involved in obscurity : we never 
agree as to their treatment, and investigations into their characters become 
more difficult than nature intended. To avoid these evils as far as possible, I 
may here remark that there is one very common form of disease universally 
called an influenza, to which, for distinction’s sake, I will venture to apply the 
term anasarcous (or dropsical) influenza, in order to distinguish it from that 
more serious or catarrhal and pulmonary form or influenza proper, which will 
engage our main attention to-day. Anasarcous influenza may accompany the last- 
mentioned form of disease ; but it frequently occurs independently, and very 
