TUBERCULOUS DISEASE OF ANIMALS IN INDIA. 133 
to the prevention of farcy (what is called malignant bursautee), 
a tuberculous disease, by those means in particular, I in- 
sisted in my paper; and in which the veterinary surgeon’s 
duty has to be supported by the commanding officer (both 
would be to blame in having bursautee in a corps), and in 
which Mr. Western has been fortunate. To this, and the 
corps being mounted on seasoned horses, Walers or Persian 
Gulphers, it is that Mr. Western has latterly been without 
cases of bursautee ; and as to those he had at Calcutta, sea- 
soned horses, on outpost duty, if the stables, &c. were no 
better than in my time, would be liable to farcy (or malignant 
bursautee). It is not the curing , but the entire absence of 
tuberculous diseases that shows horses or other animals are 
properly managed. 
Mr. Western writes, “The ulcer’s primary appearance is 
precisely described by him ; but at this stage, I unhesitatingly 
affirm, that, what Mr. Hodgson designates the tuberculous 
state, and Captain Apperley c kunker,’ never exists, but only 
at a later period, if the case has been unsuccessfully treated 
or neglected altogether.’’ Certainly, this is the result of 
being kept in foul, dirty, unventilated stables ; it is, as I 
have stated, malignant form of the tuberculous disease. In 
a note, it is stated, “kunkur is gravel — neither this nor 
tubercle is correct ; it is literally osseous spiculi found there,” 
true enough, osseous matter is one of the changes of tubercles 
in all tissues, particularly in horses, and in various ways; 
sometimes the cyst is bony, at other times, the centre or 
whole of the tubercle. If Mr. Western will have the good- 
ness to refer to No. 67, Veterinarian, £ or July, 1853, p. 415, 
he will read, “ In the same piece of skin I met with assem- 
blages of granular kernels, in which there is a small nucleus. 
These kernels resist the action of acetic acid, and that is the 
precise character of kernels. It is absolutely as if there had 
been an abundant exudation in the derma.” In case Mr. 
Western has it not, I have extracted this opinion of “ M. Van- 
kempen, a distinguished anatomo-pathologist,” of the primary 
state of the derma ; and as osseous spiculi is phosphate of 
lime it would resist the action of acetic acid, which kunkur, 
impure carbonate of lime, would not; so the test shews Capt. 
Apperley is wrong, as to the nature even of this state of 
bursautee tubercles ; but, in the name of forceps, why must 
“ these be carefully scooped out with the finger ?” perhaps, 
there is virtue in a stud officer’s finger, that the touch is the 
cure of the evil, and it is vain for veterinary surgeons to try, 
or try to breed cavalry horses either: for by Mr. Ilurford’s 
description of Bengal stud horses, in No. 59, Veterinarian , for 
xxvii. ]8 
