THE PRESENT EPIDEMIC AMONG HORSES. 
153 
ease, or from what the same organic disease would be at another 
time, that it is at once evident to the veterinarian what is amiss 
with the horse : the animal’s general aspect, his look, his demean- 
our, his posture, and, more than all, his sore soft cough, and his 
reeling gait, declare him to be the subject of influenza. I shall 
now enter into a more particular account of symptoms which we 
may call occasional , from not being invariably present, or from only 
being now and then apparent, though when present they are equally 
characteristic with such as have been described as generally 
existing. 
Weakness in the back and loins : — From the very onset 
of the disease — the attack, probably, having commenced during the 
night, and been discovered at stable-time in the morning — this 
“ weakness,” in the loins especially, is apparent. The patient, 
perhaps, has to walk but a few yards out of his stable into a box, 
and yet such is the rolling imbecile action of his loins and hind 
quarters that without support one seems afraid to drag him on. 
There can be no positive or direct debility here ; an hour ago the 
animal was in health and strength and spirits; now he is spiritless, 
dejected, disabled in physical power to that degree that his limbs 
scarcely obey his will, and seem to bend under the weight of his 
body. What can be the cause of all this “ weakness?” It is 
precisely the same thing as happens to a man attacked with fever 
— prostration of strength to the utmost degree before there has 
been any thing either in the disease itself or in the treatment for 
it — should any have been employed — to have produced any direct 
debility. Here the nervous system is, evident^, in some strange 
unaccountable manner affected by the influenza. This being the 
onset of the attack, whether it be judicious, under such symptoms 
of “ weakness,” to draw blood or not will, I should say, depend on 
the concomitant symptoms. Should pleuro-pneumonia appear to 
have set in, I should say in this early stage a moderate blood- 
letting would prove beneficial. When, however, this “ weakness 
in the back and loins,” and other signs of derangement in the 
nervous system, appear as a sequel of the primary attack, or 
during the latter stages of the disease, it will rather demand a tonic 
treatment. In one case, where this “ weakness” appeared as a 
sequel, there was observable in the loins a twitching or sort of 
subsultus tendinum. 
Quickness of Breathing in cases of influenza cannot be 
regarded in the same pathological light as under ordinary circum- 
stances : if we treat a horse on account of it the same as we would 
were there no influenza present, we shall surely err, and on some 
occasions commit a very serious error. I am sure, coming on 
in paroxysms as it often does, that it is more dependent upon a 
VOL. XVIII. Y 
