DISEASES INCIDENTAL TO ANIMALS IN AMERICA. 143 
If I have not made myself, in this description, intelligible, it 
is through fear of trespassing too much on your valuable space, 
and not from any desire to withhold information. 
DISEASES INCIDENTAL TO ANIMALS IN 
AMERICA. 
By J. Harkness, Saint Louis, Mo. 
Gentlemen, — My only apology for addressing you is the 
hope that I may be able to contribute something, however 
little, to veterinary science. I am not a veterinary surgeon 
by education, as you will no doubt soon discover. My 
partner, Mr. Glasgow, and myself, keep about 125 horses, 
and these are as many as I wish to attend to. I 
have been a subscriber to the Veterinarian for three years, 
and would have sent you some account of the cases that have 
occurred in my practice, but was deterred because I could 
not do it in scientific language, and therefore do not expect 
you to publish all or anything I may write you, but to use it 
— if it should be worth anything — in any way you like, to 
promote the interest of the Veterinarian. 
There has never been an epidemic that I am aware of 
among our domesticated animals until early this year, 
when the influenza broke out among our horses, and anthrax , 
accompanied with fever, in our cattle. The first case I 
treated died, and as he was the first I had lost out of three of 
our own horses, l felt disappointed with the mode of treat- 
ment ; and hearing of Mr. Ernst Lehman, a graduate of the 
Royal College of Berlin, who had just arrived in this city, I 
got another German doctor to interpret, when I soon found 
that he was a man of superior education, and a good prac- 
titioner, having been six years veterinary surgeon to a 
regiment. I furnished him with medicine, and introduced 
him to all my customers that had cases of influenza. In 
return, he told me how to treat my own cases, which I did 
with great success, not losing 5 per cent. But my protege 
could not stand so much prosperity: he died of apoplexy 
before the summer was over. The principal remedies used 
by him were sulphate of soda, juniper berries, tartar emetic in 
large doses , hyoscyamus, camphor, and blisters. 
I was once called to see a case of traumatic tetanus . The 
patient was in such a state that considering there existed no 
hope of cure I ordered him to be shot ; but Lehman told me 
