ON THE PRESENT INFLUENZA AMONG HORSES. 337 
this last fortnight or three weeks, discharges from the nostrils 
have appeared, profuse even in quantity and purulent in their 
nature : in fact, the disease has assumed a more catarrhal cha- 
racter — ergo, I might add, a more favourable one. 
The disorder has exhibited every phase and degree of inten- 
sity, from the slightest perceivable dulness, which has passed off 
with, simply, a change in the diet, to an insidious, unyielding, 
unsubduable pleurisy, ending in hydrothorax, in spite of every 
thing that could be done, and most timely done. So long as the 
disease has confined itself to the throat, and that there has been 
along with that only dejection, prostration, and fever, there has 
existed no cause for alarm ; but, when such symptoms have 
after some days’ continuance not abated, and have, on the con- 
trary, rather increased, and others have arisen which but too 
well have authorised suspicions that “ mischief was brewing in 
the chest,” then there became the strongest reasons for alarm for 
the safety of the patient. What is now to be done ? The prac- 
titioner durst not bleed a second time, at least, not generally, for 
the patient’s strength would not endure it, although he is certain 
a pleurisy is consuming his patient. He possesses no effectual 
means for topical blood-letting. Neither blisters nor rowels, 
nor plugs nor setons, will take any effect. Cathartic medicine 
he must not administer ; nauseants are uncertain and doubtful 
in their efficacy ; sedatives, tonics, and stimulants, and narcotics, 
appear counter-indicated, inflammation existing, and, when tried 
under such circumstances, have, I believe, never failed to do 
harm. Dissatisfied with one and all of these remedies in the 
late influenza — though the losses I have experienced have, after 
all, not been so very comparatively great, being no more, since the 
beginning of the year, than three out of nearly forty cases — I re- 
peat, having, as I thought, reason to be dissatisfied for losing even 
these three cases, considering that they came under my care at 
the earliest period of indisposition, I determined, in any similar 
cases that might occur, to have recourse to that medicine which, 
in all membranous inflammations in particular, is the physi- 
cian’s sheet-anchor, and which I had exhibited, and still con- 
tinue to do, myself, in other disorders, though I had never given 
it a fair trial in epidemics having that tendency which I have 
described the present one uniformly to have indicated, viz., the 
destruction of life by an inflammation attacking membranous 
parts, of a nature over which, being forbidden to bleed, we ap- 
peared to possess little or no power. Could we have drawn 
blood from the sides or breast by cupping or by leeches, in any 
tolerable quantity, we might have had some controul over the 
internal disease ; but, barred from this, and without any remedy 
