145 
Contemporary Progress of Veterinary Science 
and Art, 
By John Gamgee, M.R.C.V.S., 
Lecturer on Veterinary Medicine and Surgery, London. 
(< Continued from p. 93.) 
Contagious Eruptive Disease of the Genitals in 
the Horse ; Maladie du Coit of the French ; Besc/i alhranlcheit 
of the Germans. — It may very justly be asked in what way 
does this disease, the symptoms of which were given at 
length in the Veterinarian for last month, differ from syphilis 
in man ? Is there any relation whatever between this and 
that? Both local affections, with a tendency to invade the 
system, to spread unremittingly, unless checked by treatment, 
and preeminently contagious ! Hertwig, Rodloff, Prince, and 
Lafosse, having observed and experimented, assert that mares 
infect stallions, and vice versa . The year before last. Prince 
and Lafosse, in the School of Toulouse, settled this question. 
Of two stallions exposed to the contagion, one became 
affected and died, and of fifteen mares covered by the infected 
stallions, eleven contracted it, and several of them died. 
Strauss, of Vienna, it seems incorrectly, regards the 
affection exclusively as due to the artificial state in which 
stallions are kept ; that it is of spontaneous origin, a strictly 
constitutional affection amongst deteriorated breeds of horses : 
but Rodloff opposes this notion by saying that in Prussia the 
stallions are cross bred between Arabs and English, and that 
they are by no means badly kept. 
According to Rodloff, hereditary predisposition, a ca- 
tarrhal state, and still more, permanent or habitual exanthe- 
matous eruptions, signs of a lymphatic dyscrasia, combined 
with the act of copulation, determine, by awakening the 
general sensibility, by the friction of the sexual organs, the 
primary evolution of the malady in stallions and mares. 
We must admit all this as purely conjectural, and rest with 
what he more convincingly asserts and supports, that it is a 
sporadic, and not an epizootic affection. As indicating its 
fatal nature and transmissibility, Rodloff quotes a phrase 
from the 4 Feuille hippologique’ for 1842, in which is des- 
cribed the stud of Count Peter Pejacsewich, situated near 
Numa, in Hungary. It is there said that in the preceding 
year (1841) the Count sustained immense losses from the 
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