HORSE SICKNESS OF THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. 491 
offered—enemata of tepid water in which soap has been 
rubbed down at frequent intervals, and general nursing and 
restorative measures should be resorted to. These remarks 
may be generalised upon to a much further extent, but I will 
content myself by adding a few more observations which 
may be the means of eliciting some valuable information on 
this subject from some of the district farmers who may have 
become familiar with the disease. For my own part, I have 
never had the good fortune to meet with any two persons 
whose statements of the nature of the disease exactly corre¬ 
sponded, showing that they have been considering different 
phases of the disease, if not essentially different forms of lung 
disease. Of one thing there is no doubt, and that is, that 
there are seasons (usually wet ones) succeeding drought, in 
which great mortality occurs among horses at the fall of the 
year; it is true that there is an ordinary mortality every fall, 
but its intensity is considerably heightened by the influences 
originating in drought. Thus horses that have been reduced 
to a state of inanition from the scarcity of grass, having from 
the abundance of the same after wet recovered their flesh 
but not their tonicity, have had their systems stimulated and 
rendered liable to inflammatory diseases, are exposed to cold 
wet nights. Is it then to be wondered at that the animal 
which yesterday revelled and gambolled in high spirits on 
his now plentiful supply of herbage, should after such expo¬ 
sure be seized with shivering and oppressed breathing,— 
only discovered when he has separated himself from the herd, 
perhaps making for the homestead,—and as lung affections 
commonly do, terminating fatally in a few hours ? 
There is not perhaps (with the exception of Australia) a 
country in the world where horses are so mismanaged or 
badly cared for as at the Cape—and no part of the globe has 
acquired such an unenviable notoriety for equine mortality, 
—where the horse sickness^"’ is made the scapegoat for 
nearly all the ills horse flesh is heir to. The long journeys 
performed by grass horses, such distances as 70 or 100, 
and even more miles in the day, are fruitful sources of lung 
disease, and men who talk of having travelled so far in a day, 
and tell you calmly that it must be something singular^^ 
that their horses should fall sick after a short journey of 
thirty or forty miles, are not likely people to enlighten one 
on the subject of the diseases of the respiratory organs. It is 
said that horses properly stabled (which doubtless means 
they are taken care of) never fall victims to this disease. No 
doubt the cases are very rare and exceptional; but I am con¬ 
vinced that stabled horses do die of it, and there is no reason 
