EPIDEMIC OF 1858 - 9 . 
311 
large intestines unloaded by means of aperients, and after 
that resorted to the exhibition of the sulphates of iron and 
copper. In proof of the value of this treatment, I would 
particularize a case of a weight-carrying bay mare that was 
down for three days; and it was only at my urgent request 
her life was spared. She recovered to carry her owner (who 
walks nearly sixteen stone) as well as ever. 
I think the suggestion thrown out by another of your cor¬ 
respondents, Mr. Storrer, of the existence of a narcotic prin¬ 
ciple in rye-grass, is not tenable. I have been a grower of 
that excellent plant for fourteen years, and my experience is 
much in its favour as green food, believing it to possess more 
nutritive properties than either vetches, lucerne, or clover.* 
The stem and seeds of all plants are both more palatable 
and suitable for horses, in my opinion, than the leaves, as 
they contain so much less water. 
The epidemic of 1840-41, which was accompanied with 
tumefied eyelids and copious defluxion of tears, drooping 
head, and quick pulse, so suggestive of headache, I never see 
now. The catarrhal fever, with discharge from the nose, 
eyes, and mouth (the influenza par excellence ), now occupies a 
place in our hippopathology, and will, I suppose, to the end 
of time; as does the pleuritic form, with its little distinctive 
marks to show the line between itself and what I may call 
the legitimate disease. All these have been accompanied by 
one invariable symptom, debility , and on this account an in¬ 
tolerance of depletion. In those cases where the pulse, from 
its frequency, has induced the practitioner to bleed—and 
these have not been a few—I think I may say that he has 
never failed to regret doing so. 
The disease of this season presents some change in its pri¬ 
mary attack, and also in its complications, but not as to the 
debility, excepting that it is more intense in degree. 
From November of last year till this time, this district 
has been visited by an immense number of attacks of bron¬ 
chitis; in fact, I may say it is a prominent disease at the pre¬ 
sent moment, and is accompanied with such an amount of 
prostration of the vital powers, that all medicines of a lower¬ 
ing character, and also the stereotyped febrifuge treatment, 
have to be abandoned, and stimulants and tonics to be sub¬ 
stituted, and this almost at the onset of the attack. 
The patient presents the usual symptoms of increased 
respiration; quick and sometimes full pulse; appetite capri¬ 
cious and diminished, but not entirely gone; faeces hard and 
* Mr. Storrer’s description applied to the common rye-grass, not the 
Italian , the plant which is cultivated by Mr. Hunt.— Eds. 
