66 
THE PRESENT EPIDEMIC AMONG HORSES. 
that peculiar nature that can never be mistaken by the veterina- 
rian who has once scented it — is ordinarily the earliest test we get 
of mercurial impregnation ; and sometimes this will be accom- 
panied, rarely preceded, by reddening and tenderness of the gums 
around the margins of the incisor teeth. I seldom look for any 
such effect under twelve doses of the medicine, and much more 
frequently have to reckon the administration of sixteen or eighteen 
or even twenty doses of it before mercurialization can be perceived. 
As soon, however, as any perceptible effect is produced, should the 
patient appear to be benefitted thereby, I either curtail the doses 
to one morning and evening, or suspend the medicine altogether : 
in cases, however, where the disease seems uninterruptedly pur- 
suing its destructive course, I push the mercury to the greatest 
extent I am able. 
In again recommending mercury to the trial of my professional 
brethren as a remedy to be employed in pleuritic and pulmonic 
inflammations, it is my desire to remind them, that, after all, it is 
to be regarded but as an adjunct to the phleam : not one particle 
of blood less is to be drawn on account of the exhibition of mer- 
cury; rather is it to be expected that the mercury coming into 
action at a period after as much blood has been drawn as the 
patient will bear, will effect that which blood-letting has but 
incompletely done or has failed to do, but yet, nevertheless, has 
perhaps prepared the way for the mercury to accomplish, viz. 
the abatement of the inflammatory action. Surgeons have been 
long ago convinced of the efficacy of mercury as a remedy against 
inflammation, especially against such as has its seat in mem- 
branous tissue; and it was the application of the same principle 
of medicinal action to the animal, combined with the acknow- 
ledged hiatus there existed in this respect in veterinary medicine, 
in pleuritic and pulmonic disease in particular, that led me in the 
first instance to exhibit mercury ; and I am happy to have it in my 
power to add, I have done so with no small degree of satisfaction 
to myself, on account of the benefit which, it has appeared to me — 
whether real or imaginary other veterinarians must determine — 
my patients have derived from its exhibition. 
In respect to COUNTER-IRRITATION, although no doubt an ex- 
cellent adjunct in our course of treatment, the only form in which 
I employ it during the acute or inflammatory stages of the disease 
is that of stimulation : I find, in such stages of pneumonia, that 
neither blisters nor rowels exert any action ; but that they lie dor- 
mant until, by the phleam, the inflammation has been abated; 
which, however, is not in general the case with stimulating appli- 
cations, such, for example, as the linimentum ammonite cum tere - 
binlhina . And after this has been rubbed a few times upon the 
