THE VETERINARY ART IN INDIA. 
259 
and are illustrated more by reference to the human frame than that 
of our patients, with the exception of those that are torpid in 
winter, and with them we have little to do. 
With regard to the horse, and most other animals, he observes 
that the season when diseases of accumulation prevail is the cold 
and rainy, or, perhaps, still more on the first return of heat, as 
the accumulation may be then too great, or the return of stimu- 
lus too sudden, which causes colds, fever, inflammation of the 
lungs and eyes and membrane of the nose, throat, &c., that are 
very much experienced in Europe, where these diseases (par- 
ticularly in spring) prevail. I have also observed them in the 
ceded districts, when the mornings have been very cold and the 
mid-day sun very hot. The horses have then been very subject 
to colds in the head, attended with a discharge at the nose, and 
inflammation of its membrane, swelled glands, &c. These dis- 
eases are generally relieved by taking from the system three or 
four quarts of blood, and clothing the animal warmly at night. 
This latter measure prevents the animal from feeling those 
sudden transitions of heat and cold which frequently induce 
disease. This is particularly experienced in England in what is 
termed catching cold, which is generally occasioned by exposure 
to cold or wet, and then suddenly exchanging it for warmth. 
It is, I believe, the sudden change in the temperature which 
generally produces fever. In England, fever in the horse is fre- 
quently so violent that it inflames the lungs in a few hours, and 
thus destroys the animal. In this country, the fever which I 
have generally observed, and which is very common in the ceded 
districts, is different from the inflammatory kind. The animal 
in this climate not possessing the same quantity of excitability, 
the effects produced by the sudden transitions in the tempera- 
ture are very different, giving rise to a low fever of a tedious 
kind, which I have almost invariably found to yield to bolusses 
twice a-day, containing one drachm each of country opium 
and emetic tartar. In this disease the excitability of the 
system is so exhausted by the continual stimulus of heat, that 
the whole action of the frame decreases, and produces symptoms 
of universal debility. The horse falls off his food, hangs his 
head, looks dull, and his skin or hide frequently becomes rough 
and tight*. 
If the above statement of the remote causes of general diseases 
is attended to, most of the phenomena of diseases peculiar to 
* I would here again expose the conduct of the Salistry, who, when the 
animal’8 hide is bound, fires it, conceiving it in this case to be the seat of 
disease, which it never is ; and if the flanks heave, they are also fired, for 
these people have no knowledge of the action of the heart and lungs. 
