152 THE PRESENT EPIDEMIC AMONG HORSES. 
working upon a sure foundation, especially as they have found an 
outlet for their surplus stock ; and, I believe, ultimately it will be 
a fine place, although, as Mr. Stewart justly observes, many for- 
tunes will not be made. It is a fine healthy climate, and, Govern- 
ment having now stopped sending convicts there, it will, after 
awhile, be a free colony. 
If, Sir, this short account of New South Wales is of any ser- 
vice to you for The Veterinarian, I shall be glad. 
I am, my dear Sir, 
Your’s faithfully. 
THE PRESENT EPIDEMIC AMONG HORSES. 
By William Percivall, M.R.C.S., Veterinary Surgeon 
First Life Guards. 
[Continued from p, 67.] 
ALTHOUGH pleuro-pneumonia — as was stated in my paper of 
last month — constitutes the prevalent and prominent character of 
the present epidemic or influenza among the horses of the metro- 
polis, still, as was also stated, do cases present themselves in which 
the bowels or the brain and nervous system seem to be the organs 
more especially affected, those of the thorax, if affected at all, being 
so only in a secondary degree of intensity. Another observation 
suggested by the results of experience is, that the pleuro-pneumo- 
nia is not the pleuro-pneumonia of ordinary occurrence — or, rather, 
that, being produced in the constitution through influenza , it is in 
many respects a different disease — a disease that neither altoge- 
ther pursues the same course, nor will yield to or bear the same 
treatment that it will in the same constitution away from the at- 
mosphere of influenza. This will account for the weakness or 
faintness manifested by our patients on the abstraction of blood ; 
the symptoms being such as seem urgently to call for such abstrac- 
tion, and yet the animal’s srrength from the first so apparently 
reduced (through indirect debility caused by the influenza), that he 
is unable to sustain himself under it. And when we come to 
examine the blood, in many of the cases, especially after the dis- 
ease has existed some time, we find a coagulum so soft and imper- 
fect, that it more resembles currant jelly than firmly congealed 
blood. In one case — and but in one case — I met with the serum 
of a greenish- yellow cast ; an appearance of rare occurrence, but 
one which I have no reason to ascribe to influenza in particular, 
having seen it in other cases as well. The very mode of attack of 
influenza is often so widely different from that of any common dis- 
