THE PRESENT EPIDEMIC AMONG HORSES. 
157 
some of the lame horses of his regiment to have rheumatism ; 
and was by several of his brother officers heartily laughed at for it : 
it would puzzle, however, some of our most learned in pathology 
to demonstrate to satisfaction that what we have characterized as 
“lameness” in the remarks we have just made, did not exhibit 
phenomena more like rheumatic or gouty inflammation than any 
thing else. And I have seen horses evincing this same sort of 
misplaced or wandering lameness — podagra aberrans — without 
any influenza or previous or concomitant indisposition of any kind, 
though such cases are, most unquestionably, of rare occurrence. 
EPISTAXIS occurred in one case, the blood streaming from both 
nostrils, and to that amount, that, although the first impression was 
that the blood came from the Schneiderian membrane, or from the 
sinuses of the head, it was evident after a time that such a source 
could hardly have supplied it in such quantities, and therefore the 
inference was, that its issue must be from the bronchial passages — 
from the lungs themselves, perhaps. And so it proved. For, one 
side of the thorax was found half-full of a bloody fluid, looking 
like serum mingled with blood, and there evidently had been 
going on the same sort of bloody effusion from the bronchial 
membrane : no lesion of membrane or rupture of bloodvessel 
being discoverable. 
Remedies for a disease, or rather for a combination of diseases, 
so prone to variation as we have found the past — shall we say the 
present — influenza to be, must, in course, tally both in kind and 
mildness or severity, with the varying character of the symp- 
toms we have to treat. As I said in my former paper, the general 
or common form in which the influenza presents itself, is cynanche, 
followed by pleuro-pneumonia. The pleura and the lungs are the 
parts that must in all cases command our attention ; though there 
do, now and then, occur cases in which the bowels are the parts 
most disordered — others in which the brain and nervous system 
are most deranged. 
The question has often been mooted in discoursing on influenza, 
whether we ought to let blood or not in the treatment of it. Some 
practitioners are so deeply rooted in opinion to the contrary, that 
they hesitate not to ascribe the loss of a good many lives to those 
that do, at the same time to boast of the superiority of their own 
undebilitating method of proceeding. I should like, however, to 
ask these non-bleeding gentleman how we are to treat — what me- 
dicines we are to administer in— cases presenting all the worst fea- 
tures of an inflammation in the chest 1 Will antimony cure it ? 
or nitre 1 or sulphur 1 or will rowels and blisters suffice to stem 
the torrent of destruction 1 It is all very well for people to talk 
about the efficacy of this or that medicine, or of the milk-and- 
water or do-nothing plan of treatment, in influenza of the mild 
