THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XVIII, No. 208. APRIL 1845. New Series, No. 40. 
OBSERVATIONS ON INFLUENZA IN HORSES ; 
WITH REFERENCE TO ITS CHARACTER AS IT APPEARED IN THE 
YEARS 1832-1836, 1840-1844. 
By William Percivall, M.R.C.S.L. 
SO generally prevalent, and in some instances so fatal, as the in- 
fluenza or epidemic of 1844-5 has proved, so long as it has con- 
tinued among our horses — it having commenced in November, and 
being hardly yet at an end — and there existing some variety of 
professional opinion as to the most successful method of treating it, 
it has occurred to me that a review of some of the past epidemics, 
and a comparison of them with the present one, might at such a 
time as this be acceptable ; perhaps, indeed, might prove to be the 
means of introducing among us some more uniform and effectual 
plan of treatment, probably of bringing some new facts to light. 
On the latter head I would not, in limine , be too sanguine ; but it 
has certainly struck me — and mayhap it may others as well — 
to be singular enough that in looking back for accounts into the 
volumes of The Veterinarian, the years most remarkable for 
the prevalence or fatality of epidemics among horses appear to 
have been 1832-1836, 1840-1844; shewing an intermission of 
three years of comparative healthiness between each period of un- 
usual sickliness. I possess no record of the occurrence of influenza 
antecedent to 1832 ; but my memory serves me sufficiently to say 
that it was either in the winter of 1827 or in the spring of 1828 
that one of any note presented itself before*. Thus are we able 
* I find, by turning over my sick register, that it occurred in the spring of 
1828. Also by a reference to the “ Posthumous Records” of the late Mr. John 
Field, it appears that 1819 and 1823 were both years remarkable for the preva- 
lence and mortality of influenza. Still within one of the recurrent fourth year. 
VOL. XVIII. ' C C 
