64 
THE PRESENT EPIDEMIC AMONG HORSES. 
them) warm, though, now and then, one or two of them will mani- 
fest coldness ; the coat (underneath the cloth) hardly perceptibly 
altered. 
The Treatment of this “ Distemper” is the treatment of 
pleuro-pneumonia, or of pleurisy of the sub-acute description. 
Our grand remedial agent must be the phleam, the only question 
concerning it being, at what times or stages of the disease it should 
be made use of, and to what extent. For my own part, I entertain 
a good deal of distrust in the maxim, 
Yenienti occurrite morbo. 
I do not mean to assert that we may not succeed in somewhat 
mitigating the violence of the coming disease ; but that we can, by 
abstracting blood, stop it, or even “ cut it short,” as people fondly 
imagine, I very much question. I know T have, myself, bled 
horses early enough — within a very few hours of their first refusal 
of their corn — and yet the disease has appeared to set in at its 
usual period, and I have thought with its wonted severity. I, 
therefore, now abstain from blood-letting until the disease has 
manifested itself; but then I never rest from repeating my attacks 
upon it, with my lancet, until the period has arrived when the in- 
flammatory action has reached its acme of violence, and conse- 
quently must henceforth be, or rather actually is, on the decline. 
And I fancy I accomplish my end better by a repetition of abstrac- 
tions of blood — not over large — than by one or two exhausting 
evacuations. Indeed, it is frequently the case that early in the 
disease the patient will not bear a large or even a full abstraction 
of blood, especially when he happens to be young, or fat, or both ; 
but bleed him once or twice to a small amount, and he will be 
found afterwards to bear losses surprisingly well, considering the 
“ weakness” he displayed at the beginning, by which the young 
and inexperienced veterinarian must take especial care not to be — 
fatally, perhaps, to his patient — deceived in his estimate of his 
patient’s strength. He must not listen to the remonstrances of the 
groom or owner of the horse, kindly intended, no doubt — “Oh, 
Sir ! he is so weak already, I am sure he rather needs blood pour- 
ing into his veins than taking out of them” — but steadily pursue 
his object of abstraction ; and in cases where he cannot succeed to 
his mind at the commencement, wait awhile, and his patient will 
acquire strength enough to bear the requisite evacuation, twice, 
three, four, or even, if necessary, five times, repeated at intervals, 
if requisite, of twelve hours, though it will more commonly happen 
that twenty-four will pass before the repetition is required : in 
some cases it may be forty-eight. The chief indication for blood- 
letting being not the pulse, but the state of the respiration : the 
