242 ON THE PRESENT EPIZOOTIC AMONG HORSES. 
been the cause of death to the majority of his patients; where, 
in many cases, were Nature left to herself, her powers would 
have triumphed, and the animals recovered. The former has, 
however, been far too frequent during the preceding three months. 
Few could have even a remote idea of the numbers of horses 
that have in so short a time fallen victims to super-purgation 
alone, from an injudicious exhibition of aloes, when the mucous 
membrane, from the peculiar derangement of its function, was 
unfit to bear the action of so acrid a purgative. 
How different is the scene with the veterinary practitioner, 
who has had the advantage of a medical education based on 
scientific principles ! To him the disease, although new, is by 
no means incomprehensible. With a mind peculiarly fitted for 
the purpose by previous education, he is able to detect, and 
attribute to their proper source, each of the long and tortuous 
train of varied symptoms which usually accompany such com- 
plicated disorders of the animal system. He also duly appre- 
ciates, and turns to advantage in deciding upon a mode of treat- 
ment, the seeming paradox of certain medical agents having 
effects on the animal economy so contrary to those which they 
are daily observed to produce, where the leading symptoms are 
to the superficial observer apparently the same, inducing him to 
believe that the causes by which they are produced must, there- 
fore, be identical. 
The prevalence of a disease which has for some months past 
been raging among the horses of this country, and the great 
number of fatal cases that have come under my own immediate 
observation, from an injudicious mode of treatment resulting 
from the true pathology of the affection not being sufficiently 
well understood, induce me to comply with the wishes of some 
of my medical friends, by presenting to the profession, in a con- 
densed form, some observations on this novel, and doubtlessly, to 
some, very interesting, subject. I am the further induced to- 
wards a compliance, by the fact of its being an affection requiring 
but the simplest treatment for its alleviation and cure, instead of 
being, as it has been generally represented, a disease most viru- 
lent in its character and most fatal in its termination. 
Previous, however, to entering into the subject, I wish it to 
be perfectly understood, that the observations contained in this 
memoir treat merely on the present epizootic among horses 
alone, and do not extend to those of any preceding period. 
Neither let it be imagined that they will for a certainty be 
applicable to every change and variety which the disease may 
assume throughout the remainder of the season ; all epidemical 
and epizootic disorders being liable to assume so many varia- 
