THE RECENT INFLUENZA AMONG HORSES. 609 
ninety-four troop horses, and out of this number sixty-five were 
affected, of which two died. The disease may be said to have 
commenced at the date above named, and to have ceased the 
latter part of September. During this period I could not ascer- 
tain that horses in the immediate neighbourhood were affected, 
although I was aware that through nearly every part of the 
country influenza had been or was more or less prevalent. I 
believe it has proved to be the case universally, that where 
many horses have been kept together, there the disease has 
more generally appeared, and with greater violence ; and this 
we would naturally expect from the impurity of the air arising 
from animal exhalations, where numbers are standing together. 
I cannot attribute the complaint to any cause, excepting I 
be allowed to suppose some peculiar atmospherical agency. 
When once produced, I believe it to be contagious; in sup- 
port of which opinion I may state, that the horses in one wing 
only of the barracks were first affected, and that the disease 
seemed to expend itself there before any in the opposite wing 
became diseased ; and also, that although the complaint did not 
exist in the immediate neighbourhood, yet in the case of an 
officer who kept his horses in a detached stable out of barracks, 
where one of them was in the daily habit of attending riding- 
school, this horse became badly affected, and three other horses 
in the same stable very shortly afterwards became similarly 
diseased. In like manner, our young horses were for a long 
time exempt from it, they being worked separately, and kept by 
themselves; though no sooner did one take the disease, than 
it gradually ran through them all. 
Epidemics generally commence with the young 
HORSES; but it was not so, as I have before observed, in this 
case ; and I can only account for it by their numbers being 
few, and by their having been long stabled, and therefore could 
hardly be regarded as raw horses. 
The Weather, during the period of the disease, and for 
some time antecedent to it, had been very unsettled, with great 
and sudden changes from heat to cold ; while increased predis- 
position to disease doubtless existed in the horses, from its being 
about the commencement of the moulting season, when they are 
always in a weakly state, and more ready to take on disease. 
Sudden alternations of temperature alone are far from sufficient, 
in my mind, to account for the peculiarly depressing character 
of this complaint. Although it may have been assisted by 
these and other causes, yet do I consider there must have 
existed something peculiar in the atmosphere, of the nature of 
which I am ignorant, to account for it: doubtless, it must be 
allied in its nature and character to those mysterious causes 
VOL. xxiv. 4 o 
