INDIAN VETERINARY DEPARTMENT. 
505 
could not assume the form and style of a professional report to 
a professional chief ; and wide and varied were these answers 
and views. The majority, however, seemed to view the disease 
as a highly inflammatory and fatal one, and generally cha- 
racterised by such effusion about the throat and neck, as to 
produce asphyxia, and call for the use of the tracheotomy 
tube; and antiphlogistics, pushed to an extreme, was the 
prevailing treatment recommended-— though one or two gen- 
tlemen candidly owned that the depletion seemed not to be 
attended with any success. On my arrival at Loodianah, 
the disease had disappeared, with the eccentricity of violent 
epidemics, and I found no case to investigate or report upon. 
But the surgeon to the troop, a gentleman of high intelli- 
gence and medical acumen, had made post-mortem examina- 
tions of the horses carried off, and informed me, that general 
congestion, but particularly of the lungs, seemed the pre- 
vailing appearance and cause of death. 
Some months after the removal of the troop from Loodi- 
anah to this station, I was one morning summoned to my 
hospital lines by a report of no less than four horses being 
seized with colic and spasm. On my reaching the lines, in a 
few minutes, one was already dead, and presented the remark- 
able effusion about the throat, not unlike the poke in sheep 
with rot. The others were showing abdominal spasm, 
attended with much irritability and general depression ; the 
pulse thready, and scarcely perceptible. One case, in fact, 
gave evidence of complete syncope and collapse. Finding I 
had now got hold of the Loodianah disease at last, I resorted 
to the generally prescribed treatment (in such cases as gave 
the least warrant), but I found on bleeding, the pulse not to 
rise on the flow, and that there existed, in fact, no toleration 
for blood-letting. To the case indicating so much prostra- 
tion and collapse, I administered 3iij of Ammoniae Carbonas, 
but could only excite slight and transient reaction. At my 
post-mortem examinations, I obtained the kind attendance and 
opinion of the surgeon of the troop, who had made the exa- 
minations before referred to at Loodianah ; and we came to 
the conclusion, that the disease was one of acute congestion, 
and presented much the appearances of death from cholera 
in the human subject. 
A peculiar atmospherical poison seems to act on the 
blood, causing congestion of all organs and glands, and dis- 
integrating the blood into its constituents, and rendering it 
of such spissitude, as to be incapable of carrying on the vital 
principle. The cause of death is clearly by necraemia, or 
death of the blood. This is shown by the remarkable infil- 
xxvii. 66 
