2S0 THE LATE EPIDEMIC DISEASES AMONG HORSES, &C. 
horns and extremities will be cold, and the pulse will be full, or 
perhaps, strong and bounding, but not much quicker than na- 
tural (allowing for the ordinary increase of frequency in those in 
the byre above the others in the open yard), or it will be quick, 
small, hard, and wiry. In some it will be strong at the heart, and 
feeble in the arteries, but, at the same time, irregular; in other 
cases it will be oppressed. 
In all those cases where there is a full, or strong bounding 
pulse, the animal must be bled freely, and that bleeding repeated, 
if necessary, in eight or twelve hours, the quantity to depend 
on its effect in weakening the pulse. It may, in many cases, 
require to be again had recourse to, sooner or later, accord- 
ing to the state of the disease, and, generally speaking, the 
sooner the better, if there is not some evident improvement. 
Similar steps must be adopted where there is a small, hard, wiry 
pulse, which is the effect of the advance of the disease in the pre- 
vious case ; but, where there is an irregular or intermittent pulse 
the animal will not stand the loss of so much blood, as in those 
cases there is always more or less disease going on in the heart 
itself, and the abstraction of blood causes increased action in that 
organ, which, being weakened by disease, is unable to perform 
this extra duty, and faintness is the consequence : in the first 
instance, rapid prostration of strength follows, and the animal 
sinks under the treatment. Such, 1 think, you will find to be the 
case with those in which you detected the serum in the pericar- 
dium, and where there was no effusion in the chest ; in short, 
in proportion to the degree of affection of the heart you would 
find the animal less able to stand the loss of blood. 
The same remark applies to those cases in which effusion has 
taken place to any great extent in the chest, even although the 
lungs or pleuree may have been the seat of active inflammation 
previously. Bleeding would now, as already noticed, increase 
the effusion, and soon destroy life. In all the other forms, espe- 
cially in the early stage of the disease, bleeding, and that repeated, 
must be chiefly depended on and boldly adopted. 
If the treatment, in regard to bleeding, requires to be varied, 
according to the nature of the case, as I have already explained, 
in like manner the medicines to be administered must also differ. 
When, for instance, the disease is entirely an inflammation of 
the lungs or the pleura, and where bleeding requires to be adopted 
with vigour, and repeated, it is evident that the medicines most 
suited to reduce the strength and frequency of the action of the arte- 
rial system will be the most advisable, and these continued until 
they are both reduced to nearly the natural state, when, if there 
is much weakness, some tonics — chiefly of the mineral kind — will 
