ON THE PRESENT EPIZOOTIC AMONG HORSES. 247 
first stage, the pulse sank considerably below the usual standard. 
The febrile symptoms are often found very intermittent. 
The respiration is sometimes found hurried, but in the majority 
of cases perfectly tranquil. It is frequently greatly accelerated 
without auscultation being able to detect any peculiar alteration 
of sound beyond that of an increased intensity of the respiratory 
murmur. In two of some cases where stertorous breathing was 
present, and where the animals, being comparatively valueless, 
were purchased for experiment, on examination after they had 
been destroyed for that purpose, there were found no alterations 
sufficiently great in the appearances of the lungs, their investing 
tunics, or the air passages leading to them, to satisfactorily ac- 
count for the great derangement of the apparatus during the life- 
time of the animals. Here it would appear that the respiratory 
system was merely increased in action from the effects of nervous 
sympathy, and not suffering from abnormal lesion. Cough is 
seldom present, excepting where it has existed previously, or 
that the affection has extended to the lining membrane of the 
larynx or bronchia. 
One of the most leading characteristics of the disease is the 
rapid prostration of strength, particularly in the hinder extremi- 
ties. 
Treatment . — It seems to be a law in the animal economy, that 
the action of an organ or set of organs cannot be increased with- 
out that of others being proportionally diminished. This appears 
to extend even to the grand divisions of the nervous system. 
Where there is an increased action going on in the organic nerves 
or “ system of the sympathetic,” with which the mucous mem- 
branes are so plentifully supplied, there is always present, as a 
consequence, a proportionate degree of debility in the motor sys- 
tem, producing that intense prostration of strength always ob- 
served in extensive epidemical affections of the mucous mem- 
branes, which may be regarded more as an effect of constitutional 
derangement, resulting from some unknown influence, than any 
specific or idiopathic disease of the tissue itself. The contrary is 
observed to take place where there is a morbid increase of action 
in the motor system, or those nerves supplying the muscles of 
volition. Tetanus offers a most striking and familiar example. 
Here there is such an increase of irritability of the inferior (an- 
terior in man) spinal columns, that all the muscles of volition are 
thrown into intense and permanent action. The organic system, 
however, becomes greatly debilitated, loses in a measure its in- 
fluence ; and, as a result, there is such a torpid state of the diges- 
tive organs, that in many cases the most drastic medicines fail 
to produce the slightest effect on the intestinal mucous membrane. 
