J24 
MR. YOUATt’s VJSTEUINARY LECTURES. 
horses of both the officers aiKl men were subject to attack; and 
three horses from the town died, two of which had drawn the 
carts that conveyed the carcasses away, and the other stood 
under a window, from which the dungr of an infected stable bad 
been thrown out. The disease would probably have spread, but 
the most summary measures for arresting its progress were adopt¬ 
ed ; every horse in the town was killed that had had the slightest 
communication with those in the barracks. One horse was 
inoculated with the pus discharged from the ulcer of an infected 
horse, and he died. A portion of his thymus gland was .intro¬ 
duced under the skin of another horse, and he also died. 
Cause. —The disease was supposed to be connected with the 
food of the horses. All the oats had been consumed, and the 
loliiim temulentum, or awmed darnel, had been given instead. 
It is said that the darnel is used by some of our brewers to give 
an intoxicating quality to their malt liquor. I well recollect, 
some five-and-thirty years ago, when an acre or two of the Bat¬ 
tersea-common field used to be annually sown with it, and it 
was jokingly said, that nobody knew what became of the 
crop. For fifteen days no alteration of health was perceived, 
and then in less than eighteen hours half of a troop perished. The 
stables were not crowded, and there was no improper treatment. 
A man disinterred some of the horses to get at the fat; swellings 
rapidly appeared in his throat, and he died in two days. A 
portion of their flesh w’as given to two pigs and some dogs, and 
they died. 
M. Brugnone found that bleeding only accelerated the death 
of the patient. He afterwards tried, and ineffectually, acids, 
cordials, purgatives, vesicatories, and the actual cautery ; and he 
frankly attributes to the power of nature the recovery of the few 
who survived. 
Gilbert's Account of the Epidemic of 1795. —M. Gilbert de¬ 
scribes a malignant epidemic which appeared in Paris in 1795, 
characterized by dulness, cough,, loss of appetite, weakness, 
pulse at first rapid and full, and afterwards continuing rapid, but 
gradually becoming small, weak, and intermittent. The bowels 
at first constipated, and then violent purging succeeding. The 
weakness rapidly increasing, with foetid breath, and foetid eva¬ 
cuations. Tumours soon appeared about the limbs, under the 
chest, and in the head, the neck, and loins. If they suppurated 
and burst, the animal usually did well; but otherwise he inevit¬ 
ably died. The formation of these tumours was critical : if they 
rapidly advanced, it was considered as a favourable symptom ; 
but if they continued obscure, a fatal termination was prognos¬ 
ticated. 
