THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
* 
VOL. XVIII, No. 206. FEBRUARY 1845. New Series, No. 38. 
THE PRESENT EPIDEMIC AMONG HORSES. 
By William PerCIVALL, M.R.C.S . , Veterinary Surgeon 
First Life Guards. 
THE sudden and trying changes of weather we have experienced 
within the last two months — at one time it being mild and humid 
and foggy, at another raw cold and humid and foggy, and at 
another intensely cold and frosty — these extraordinary vicissitudes, 
I say, have been productive of sad disease among the horses of 
our great metropolis : whether among those in the country like- 
wise we have yet to learn. 
The disease — distemper, epidemic , influenza, or whatever other 
name it may go by — is neither more nor less than our old arch- 
enemy, pleuro-pneumonia, in a sub-acute and rather an insidious 
form. The horse, at the very beginning, shews the slightest in- 
disposition by refusing part or, may be, the whole of his feed of 
corn, or by not being so brisk and ready at his work as usual, and 
by coughing once or twice in the course of his work or in the 
stable. His indisposition may or may not be noticed until, a day 
or two afterwards, signs of soreness of his throat come to be ob- 
served : he cannot swallow his mouthful of hay as usual, and the 
slightest compression of his throttle makes him flinch or sets him 
coughing ; when left to himself he hangs his head in his stall, is 
evidently dull in spirits, and, if examined further, will be found 
to shew reddening of the Schneiderian membrane, with some 
slight serous or ichorous discharge from his nose. The distemper 
is now set in, and will turn, probably, either into severe sore 
throat — cynanche laryngea vel pharyngea — or into an attack of 
VOL. XVIII. K 
