ON THE KUMREE. 
253 
In the incipient treatment one precaution is to be especially 
attended to, and that is, that active purges must not be ad¬ 
ministered ; for, in the early stage, it is quite impossible to say 
that the case may not be one of approaching pneumonia; and 
should this happen, and active purgation have been established, 
we shall but too certainly have cause to rue a practice which 
has induced so much irritation of the mucous surfaces of the 
bowels in combination with disorder in the lungs : the two, when 
present together, being found, invariably vve believe, highly pre¬ 
judicial to the subject of their attack. 
ON THE KUMREE. 
By Mr. Hughes, V. S. 
[Commuuicated by Mr. Molyneux.] 
To the Editors of “ The Veterinarian.” 
Gentlemen, 
The following communication on Kumree, or weakness of 
the loins, was made to me about three years ago by a Mr. 
Hughes, veterinarian, in the service of the East India Com¬ 
pany. As it tends to throw some light on one of the worst dis¬ 
eases to which horses in India are subject, you may possibly 
deem it worthy a place in your journal. 
li Kumree and Ah-dhruno; are the names oiven to a disease 
supposed to exist in the loins of the horse; and the words imply 
as much. Kumree is derived from kummur, and ah-dhrung is 
synonymous to paraplegia. The causes that produce it are said, 
by the natives, to be severe exercise, exertion in leaping, or a stroke 
of the wind; and is by them considered similar to the palsy in 
the human subject: Mr. W. M. is also of the same opinion. Mr. 
W. M. was the writer of many valuable subjects which appeared 
in the Calcutta periodicals on the diseases of the horse: it may 
not be amiss to observe, that he has been supposed to be the late 
Mr. Morecroft. He says, that kumree bears more resemblance, 
in its effects, to palsy than to any other disease by which man 
is affected: however I do not subscribe to this, for reasons that 
are obvious: in palsy, the part or limb affected is deprived of 
sense and motion; in kumree this is not the case. Some are 
disposed to think it similar to the disease of the spine in the 
human; but they are widely different: in the human, the pa¬ 
tients lose the power of walking, their limbs are frequently 
convulsed with involuntary twitching*, and they not only become 
