STRANGLES. 
341 
rarely accompanied by any offensive smell. The fever increases 
—the pulse indicates extreme irritability—the cough becomes 
more aggravated—the horse heaves violently at the flanks—and 
this continues three or four days, or perhaps a week; and if the 
practitioner has neglected to examine the age of the horse, and 
has not recollected the disease to which he is then so subject, 
but has treated the case as one of aggravated cough and fever, 
and has bled copiously, and has been pouring in his sedative 
medicines, he may linger on another week, and not do well at 
last. 
At length some swelling appears about the throat or head; at 
first perhaps in the region of the parotids; but at length the en¬ 
largement is decidedly in the centre of the channel between the 
branches of the lower jaw. The disease now assumes its true 
character, it is phlegmonous inflammation of the subcutaneous 
cellular substance between the jaw . It is called strangles , from 
the violent cough before the appearance of the tumour, and the 
pressure of the tumour before it suppurates threatening to strangle 
the horse. 
Derivation of Name. —Mr. Castley, in a late number of The 
Veterinarian, quotes from Gervase Markham, the probable 
derivation of the name. “ It is a great and hard swelling 
beneath a horse’s nether chaps, upon the root of his tongue, and 
about his throat; which swelling, if not prevented, will stop the 
horse’s windpipe, and so strangle and choke him, and from which 
effect, and none other, the name of this disease took its deriva¬ 
tion.” In some parts of Great Britain it is called strangullion . 
The inhabitants of the north of Italy recognize it by the name 
of strangolina, and in the south of France it is termed etranguillon. 
The prevailing symptoms are much the same wherever the dis¬ 
ease is known. 
Certain Countries exempt. —Strangles is unknown in certain 
countries. It has not yet found its w r ay to the south of Italy, 
nor to Spain, and neither to Arabia nor to Africa; and northwards 
it has not reached to Russia or Norway. We cannot always 
give the reason of it, but the fact is plain enough, that certain 
diseases of the human being and the brute are peculiar to certain 
countries. 
Epidemic. —The subject of atmospheric agency is yet involved 
in a great deal of mystery; but we know, with reference to this 
disease, even in our own country, that there are certain seasons 
when a case of strangles rarely occurs, and a few months afterwards 
there is scarcely an establishment or a farm, without the majority 
of the young horses exhibiting evident symptoms of this disease. 
VOL. V. 3 A 
