VETERINARY SCHOOL AT ALFORT. 
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discharge depends upon the extent of the pulmonary inflammation. 
Not generally very abundant so long as the animal is kept quiet, 
it works its way into the inferior meatus, and then dries up upon 
the dependent parts of the nares. Exercise sometimes renders it 
frothy, more bloody and abundant, and so much so that it adheres 
to the whole circumference of the nostril. In this state it somewhat 
resembles the discharge which accompanies the commencement of 
acute glanders*. 
The loathing of solid food and desire for fluids are not symptoms 
peculiar to pneumonia ; they belong to all acute affections ; their 
presence, however, always serves to render the prognostic clearer. 
Where the appetite continues good, notwithstanding the existence 
of pneumonia of some standing, it is a favourable symptom; while, 
on the other hand, the prognostic always becomes more serious where 
patients manifest a prolonged loathing for food, however slight, ac- 
cording to our means of ascertaining the fact, and in proportion to 
the extent of lung injured by disease. In large heavy horses, the 
appetite holds longer during an attack of pneumonia, and returns 
sooner after it has subsided, than in light and irritable horses. 
We must also be upon our guard against the voracity of the former ; 
it may lead us astray, and cause us to doubt the actual seriousness 
of the malady. 
The prolonged standing position is a symptom invariably 
attendant upon pneumonia in the horse ; it probably arises from 
the weight of the animal rendering his respiration difficult in a 
lateral decubitus. Even during a state of health many horses 
breathe loudly, and almost plaintively, when lying upon their side : 
this probably arises from the weight of the body impeding a free 
* I have known persons fall into the error of confounding this discharge 
with that arising from abscess in the lungs, and condemning a horse suffering 
from it as having “mourning of the chine,” or pulmonary consumption. 
These symptoms, so pathognomonic of pneumonia — I mean the groan and the 
discharge — were first pointed out to me by my father. They may be known 
to other practitioners, but I am not aware that any veterinary author has 
mentioned them. D’Arboval does not. There are numerous observations 
equally important as these, and facts full of interest are constantly being met 
with in individual practice, but which, for want of publicity, are lost to the 
general community. Is not the period arrived when all veterinarians should 
be called upon to contribute to a general work, a kind of encyclopaedia, which 
should be a summing up, and register, of modern veterinary science ? This is 
a question worthy of consideration, and one which the Central Veterinary 
Medical Society, and the approaching promulgation of a law protective of our 
profession, will not fail to bring under notice. 
I shall recur to this suggestion in the course of the next year; meanwhile I 
purpose laying it before the Central Veterinary Medical Society for their 
consideration. 
