604 
DISEASES OF ANIMALS IN INDIA 
proved fatal to many horses, but, cautioned by former expe- 
riences, I requested the horses might be immediately sent 
to gentle walking exercise after I had examined them ; for 
I was careful not to increase it, for fear of bringing on that 
inflammation it was my endeavour thus to prevent, by 
gently increasing the peristaltic motion to unbind the intes- 
tines. Horses that looked dull, or I had any doubts about, 
I kept in and had clystered instead. 
In India, diseases are often epizootic among dogs, camels 
cattle, sheep, goats, tame rabbits, poultry, and preserved 
game, but these have not, in my experience, in the first 
instance, resembled cholera ; diarrhoea supervenes sometimes 
in all, but is not so characteristic of cholera as the disease 
I have described, which, in its incurableness, is more like 
cholera. Poultry, in particular, show choleraic symptoms, 
because, to prevent wild animals carrying these off, they are 
shut up in some house, which they soon foul, and then 
breathe impure air. Sporting dogs also, from the same 
cause, become diseased, while the pariah dogs of villages 
remain healthy. I have no experience of those "of large 
cities, except having seen them eat all kinds of filth ; camels, 
cattle, sheep, and goats, are kept in cantounds, in general 
not housed. 
I mentioned this disease in No. 56 of The Veterinarian for 
August, 1852; and I might close this narrative of facts, had 
I not read Mr. Marshall’s very able paper in Nos. 66 and 67 of 
the same Journal, “On the Communicability of Asiatic Cho- 
lera to Domesticated Animals.” But I trust I shall not be 
accused of presumption if I continue, and offer a few obser- 
vations, perhaps not strictty veterinary : you can omit these, 
if you think proper, without giving me offence, for I have 
no pretensions to knowledge of Asiatic cholera in man, which 
I might have seen had I gone to the General Hospital at 
Calcutta. Just to show the difference between practising 
on man and animals, a student of mine, who had been an 
assistant apothecary at the hospital, told me he had admi- 
nistered to cholera patients, by order, castor oil with success. 
I have been told by several in India they had given it, and I 
have been called in to horses where livery stable keepers had 
given castor oil in this disease in the first stage, and the 
horses had invariably died ; and you will, no doubt, say, from 
what you know of the action of castor oil on horses, that 
this was the most likely result. I mention this, because in 
animals differing from man considerably in anatomical struc- 
ture of the abdominal viscera, and in the quality and kind of 
food most natural for them to feed upon, perhaps we should 
