528 
ON SPECIFIC FEVER OF HORSES, OXEN, &c. 
PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE SPECIFIC FEVER FROM 
THE CONGREGATION OF ANIMALS, MADE BERING SEVE¬ 
RAL YEARS, AT THE EAST INDIA COMPANY’S EXTENSIVE 
BREEDING ESTABLISHMENTS FOR HORSES, OXEN, AND ^ 
DROMEDARIES, IN INDIA. 
Bj/ Mr. J. T. Hodgson, Hampton Wick. 
There is a constitutional predisposition, from newness of 
texture or organization, in all young animals to be attacked by 
fever from being congregated in great numbers; but while they 
are kept at the place at which tiiey were bred, although exposed 
to the exciting causes, they are net so predisposed as when re¬ 
moved thence, or else more readily acted upon afterwards by the 
usual exciting causes. 
Young animals are attacked by this fever at all ages, but when 
kept in small numbers, arrive at maturity without it. On being 
afterwards congregated with others, they are rarely exempt from 
its attack. 
This fever is observed in India as a primary affection; that 
is, there is an alteration in the natural action of the heart and 
arteries, without the slightest symptom of local disease. 
Whatever the local disease which is the consequence of this 
fever may be, whether strangles, catarrh, farcy, glanders, tuber¬ 
culous ulcers in the lungs, or affection of the liver or skin, the 
pus inserted into a healthy animal produces a similar fever on 
the third day, and symptoms of local disease on the fifth day. 
There seems to be a disposition for the same part to be affected 
in the inoculated animals as in those from whom the pus was 
taken, dependent, however, in some measure, on the part. The 
latter circumstance has been remarked by Mr. Coleman, with 
respect to inoculation with the pus of farcy and glanders, as a 
test of these local affections being the result of one and the same 
constitutional disease. Inoculation, therefore, so far as pro¬ 
ducing always the same local affection, is by no means a test 
that these different local affections are distinct diseases; while 
the remarkable coincidence of the fever being observable on the 
third, and the local affection on the fifth day, whatever part 
becomes diseased, is a proof that all are the results of the same 
constitutional disease. 
The contagious nature of the pus of strangles was well known 
at the Company’s stud. Lieutenant Johnson, as I was told, 
inoculated some colts in the extremities with the matter of 
