OBSERVATIONS ON INFLUENZA IN HORSES. 
187 
volcanic or electrical influence — the nature of which, for my own 
part, I do not pretend to comprehend. That the influenza, what- 
ever it be, when it is developed and spread abroad, is attracted 
into certain regions or localities, and alights upon certain subjects 
in preference to others, I, for one, am quite ready to believe. 
Mr. Goodwin, V.S. to the Queen, mentioned to me an observation 
he had made in respect to the late (or present) epidemic. Her 
Majesty’s horses, at Pimlico, stand in double stables, and among 
them he has had upwards of thirty cases of influenza, the subjects 
of nearly all of which have stood on those sides of the stables 
which are exposed to the north-east. I have, since, made inquiries 
respecting my own horses, and T find, out of sixty-four cases, that 
twelve have stood in stables facing the east, eleven at the western 
sides of double stables, seventeen at the northern sides, and twenty- 
three nearest to the southern sides : this universality of attack 
may arise from the stables standing in rows, and therefore being 
so arranged that one side of the buildings is hardly more exposed 
than another. I have, however, before shewn the strange predi- 
lection the disease has had for horses with five-year-old mouths. 
That the influenza does not spread through the agency of con- 
tagion or infection I think we have tolerably satisfactory evidence. 
In stables containing great numbers of horses, it does not spread 
from one horse to his neighbour, nor does it affect the horses stand- 
ing in one stable to the exclusion of another stable ; but flies (if I 
may use the expression) from stable to stable, and from stall to 
stall, skipping one, two, or three horses, to select its (five-year-old) 
subject. I have never myself had any reason to regard the dis- 
ease as contagious, I therefore have on no occasion taken any 
precautions against the spread of it in any such way ; and I cannot 
say I have ever had the slightest reason to regret having disre- 
garded any such suspicions or rumours. 
Diagnosis. — It is of vital import to us, as practitioners, to be 
able to make a distinction in practice between cases of influenza 
and cases of ordinary or sthenic inflammation of the same parts or 
organs. A horse is brought to us with symptoms of laryngitis or 
bronchitis, of pleurisy or pneumonia, of inflammation of the brain 
or inflammation of the frontal sinuses, and we bleed him and 
otherwise treat him as we would for common inflammation of these 
parts, when, instead of getting better, he gets worse and weaker, 
and rapidly sinks under our misapplied depletive remedies. I 
have no hesitation in confessing myself to have been thus deluded 
in my own practice, and this makes me the more desirous to guard 
others against falling into the same fatal error. How are we, then, 
to make the distinction between a case of common disease and one 
of disease arising from influenza 1 The evident depression under 
