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ILLUSTRATIONS OF FEVER IN MORSES. 
Q. Is it a dangerous disorder ? 
A. By no means. On the contrary, generally speaking, it is 
a very mild and controllable malady; and for this reason it is that 
the professors at veterinary colleges, and other practitioners, have 
opportunities of seeing or observing so little about it. 
Q. Detail the symptoms of fever. 
A. The horse is at first observed to have become spiritless and 
heavy : in the stall he stands with his head hanging down, and 
manifests unusual disinclination to turn or move ; out of the 
stable, he has evidently lost much of his natural vivacity, and is 
found to sweat on, comparatively, trivial exercise. The extremi¬ 
ties (the ears and legs) and the surface of the body grow cold; 
the coat becomes roughened : actual shivering, or an approach to 
it, may or may not occur. He refuses the next feed put before 
him; or, should he pick at all, he prefers the hay, or even the 
new straw. By degrees, this sense of coldness leaves the body, 
and at length both the extrenrties and it grow warm—perceptibly 
warmer than ordinarily. The mouth, likewise, which was livid 
and cold before, now becomes hot and dry. The pulse rises with 
the accession of heat: in all cases it becomes quick ; in most, also 
full; in others, also hard. Respiration is visibly disturbed : the 
animal draws his breath, though perhaps still but slowly, with a 
sign of labour or weight evidently unusual. By this time, the 
early dejection is often succeeded by an unnatural watchfulness: 
the horse will have his head raised and his ears erect, as il he were 
in the act of listening, when he proves still, in reality, listless of 
all around him. He has now no appetite. His dung, if he should 
have lately voided any, is high-coloured and in small rolls. He 
stales but little at a time, oftener than usual, and perhaps not 
without some groan or grunt, or extraordinary effort. 
The incipient dejection and the cold fit require close and early and 
accustomed observation to detect. The practitioner, not called in (it at all) 
until Song: after it has ceased to exist, declares “ he witnessed no cold or 
shivering fit \ v how should he? The groom is the only probable person to 
have noticed the occurrence; and it is by no means improbable that he, 
through heedlessness or ignorance, or both, has overlooked it. Be it add¬ 
ed, however, that a cold fit is not invariably present; nor is it essential to 
constitute fever. The disturbed breathing in idiopathic fever never amounts 
to, or at all resembles the hurried, laborious, and painful heaving of the 
flanks characteristic of inflammation of the lungs: in symptomatic fever, 
poignant, agonizing pain will, however, occasion equally distressing heaves 
of the flanks; but then, in the latter case, the animal breaks out into a pro¬ 
fuse sweat, and must be promptly relieved, or he dies. Faintness, occasion¬ 
ed from loss of blood, will produce similar symptoms. I make these latter 
remarks in reply to those who would fain persuade me that I could not dis¬ 
tinguish between a fever and a pneumonia , 
