ON THE RECENT EPIDEMIC AMONG HORSES. 
513 
Beside these diseases of the lower animals, we have intermit- 
tent and typhoid fevers equally as prevalent in the human sub- 
ject, and making extensive and fearful ravages among the in- 
habitants of this city, more especially in the families of the 
poorer classes of individuals. 
It would be mere pretension on my part, and would give rise to 
a never-ending discussion, were I to endeavour to elucidate any 
theory, or throw out any conjectures as to the primary cause of 
so much existing disease affecting the animal body at this 
or any other particular time. There must certainly be something 
dependent on atmospheric influence in the production of the 
malady. I might allude, for instance, to the present summer ; 
and even during the spring months, the weather has been very 
unpropitious, attended with cold, wet, easterly winds, during 
which cough, sore throat, and many chest affections predominated 
to a considerable extent, both in the horse and in man. 
Notwithstanding the many plausible arguments and beautiful 
spun-out theories that have been described from the time of the 
ancient Italian physicians to the most scientific men of the 
present day, we are still left in the dark ; and it is an intricate 
task to the most enlightened observer to unravel the cause of the 
greater proportion of the maladies that prevail. Nearly all, how- 
ever, have agreed that they must be principally attributed to at- 
mospheric agency ; but as to the nature of that agency, strangely 
different opinions have been suggested. Theories that have no 
definite form, but vary with the changes of the season — bad 
ventilation — peculiar localities, constitution, and habits of differ- 
ent persons — all these are regarded as remote or predisposing 
causes. Some have been satisfied with affirming that the air 
which is breathed undergoes some change in the proportions of the 
gases of which it is composed, or is empoisoned by miasmata re- 
ceived from the earth ; others attribute it to infectious vapours 
escaping from the bowels of the earth in various quarters of the 
globe during the convulsions of nature in volcanic eruptions. 
I will endeavour to give a summary account of the influenza, 
as it has lately come under my observation. The influenza or 
epizootic in horses generally prevails, more or less, in the spring 
and autumnal months, owing to the vicissitudes of the season, 
and the animals at that period shedding their coat. This neces- 
sarily renders them weak in constitution, and more susceptible of 
taking on disease, especially in those organs otherwise more pre- 
disposed for an attack. The majority of practitioners, I believe, 
have nearly agreed that this formidable opponent assumes a ty- 
phoid or protean character, which, to a greater or less extent, is 
an inflammatory diathesis of one or more of the vital organs of the 
VOL. xvi. 3 z 
