BURSAUTEE. 129 
bring about actual and complete salivation in eight or ten 
days, old subjects yielding to its influence first. 
These grave errors, Mr. Editor, certain to entail disappoint- 
ment on those that put them into practice, added to the fact of 
literally calling those tuberculated inorganic masses of in- 
spissated pus found in bursautee sores, “ kunkur * stones ” will 
be sufficient to convince the merest tryo in equine matters 
that nearly the whole of the treatise is futile and useless, and 
that Captain Apperley has wandered from his natural pro- 
vince in writing a medical essay — the conclusion being that 
what little real metal it contained, might have been separated 
from the dross, and communicated to his veterinary surgeon, 
through whom, with some valuable additions, it might have 
been published for the benefit of us all, and which might 
have been done without depriving Captain Apperley of one 
particle of the credit, if any was due to him. It would be 
presumption in me, looking at the date of my commission, to 
say whether Captain Apperleyks treatment, when carried out 
in principle, by increasing the doses (and it does strike me 
that he has forgotten the units to his numerals) or in othpr 
words whether salivation and black wash would cure, or even 
arrest the destructive progress of the malady which is most 
important, as from what I saw of it last year in the 2d Light 
Cavalry, I believe it to be depending on a peculiar humid 
state of atmosphere known only in India during the rains, 
debilitating and relaxing muscular fibre, and I may say 
vitiating the system ; thus lowering the energy and powers 
of reproduction (a property the horse possesses in a high 
degree when in health), that the granulatory process is either 
tardy or totally stopped ; the consequence is that the sores 
extend and spread, the structure being destroyed as it goes, 
putting on that peculiar leaden hue, and resisting all efforts 
on our part to induce the healing process till the air becomes 
dry — when a change for the better take place, and they as 
rapidly heal as before they spread — but the structure is gone, 
and a poor attempt at a mend is attempted by nature to 
supply the lost integument which ahways ends in a large 
cicatrix for every sore, to tell you that the horse has had 
bursautee, and will have it again next year ; rendering him 
valueless. As I said before, it is most important that we 
should have a remedy in time to prevent all this, and that, 
my experience tells me, must be a constitutional one, and I 
do hope the senior Yets, of India will enlighten us juniors, by 
giving the result of their long practice. In the meantime, I 
shall not be slow in making myself acquainted with its cause 
* Stones of which roads are made. 
