158 
THE PRESENT EPIDEMIC AMONG HORSES. 
and inoffensive character, such as in former years, and in many 
cases even in the present season, it has assumed ; but, when in- 
flammation has manifestly set in upon vital organs — upon parts of 
the utmost importance to life — I have before stated, and I state 
again now, that, in my opinion, in blood-letting must be placed our 
chief reliance ; by which I mean, blood-letting judiciously put in 
practice, as well as to time as to amount. I have already endea- 
voured to shew that the pleuro pneumonia of influenza is not or- 
dinary or common pleuro-pneumonia : the subject of it will bear 
nothing like the same depletion, neither will he bear frequent re- 
petition of it — sometimes none at all. Still, in the dangerous state 
of disease in which he is manifestly suffering, and that disease 
partaking of the nature of what to our senses is inflammation , 
unless we can, at all events, in the first instance, and as an imme- 
diate remedy, meet it by blood-letting, — I ask again, what are we 
to do that will afford us any chance of saving the life of our 
patient 1 
As to medicine, I believe that, in the majority of cases, assisted 
by counter-irritation, antimony, and nitre, and sulphur, and such- 
like not over-potent agents, may suffice. In common pleuro- 
pneumonia I am, as is known, an advocate for the exhibition of 
mercury — calomel with opium : it is my duty, however, to say, that 
where influenza prevails, so does the irritability and action of the 
whole animal constitution becomes altered, that medicines which 
we are in the habit of lauding as remedies under ordinary condi- 
tions of body, either fall short of proving equally serviceable, or 
sometimes prove, should they be in themselves powerful, pro- 
ductive of harm in place of good. Such has proved the case with 
mercury, notwithstanding it was guarded by opium — so susceptible 
has the mucous membrane of the bowels been, that calomel, even 
in reduced doses, has brought on diarrhoea ; and that, as every 
practitioner knows, in the latter stages of the disease especially, is 
a symptom of an extremely troublesome and alarming character. 
There is the same objection to the exhibition of aloes, though as an 
aperient the latter may, generally with advantage, be administered 
once or twice, in cases especially where the bowels appear confined, 
early in the disease, but certainly not afterwards. To sum up our 
observations on treatment, perhaps that veterinarian acts with most 
success in the therapeutics of influenza who treats symptoms as 
they happen to arise : it being, in such a Protean and ever- vary- 
ing disorder, difficult, if not impossible, to know when or how to 
apply remedies touching the source of the malady*. 
* By far the greater number of the horses — in the ratio, perhaps, of eight or 
nine to one — which I have seen with the disease, have had five-year-old 
mouths; i. e. were cither rising five or rising six years of age. 
