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W. L. WILLIAMS. 
draft work, where they are not likely to ever again he bred. But 
some of the affected mares were unfortunately bred to neighbor¬ 
ing healthy stallions, and in this way the disease was communi¬ 
cated to XVIII by a mare bred early in 1886 to XII-XIII by 
Henry Bell of Wilson township and to XVII by a mare bred by 
X. Foley in fall of 1885 to XII-XIII and afterwards sold to 
Kelly & Waters, and by them bred to XVII in 1886 and 1887. 
Were it possible to trace the history of every affected animal, we 
would doubtless find all cases emanating from one source of origin, 
and from the evidence now at hand it would seem that the most 
probable source of origin of the present outbreak is the Moore 
horse (XV.) Bearing in mind the history of the disease in the old 
world, we would naturally look to some imported animal for our 
source of infection, and since practically the only horses we import 
from a country known to be infected are those from France, we 
would consequently expect to trace the disease either directly or 
indirectly to that country. 
Character .—There exists almost as many definitions for equine 
syphilis as there are different writers upon the subject. 
The name maladie du coit signifies merely that it is a disease 
contracted by copulation, while in fact there is at least one other 
venereal affection of solipeds (horse, ass, etc.), \yhich might as 
properly be termed maladie du coit as this disease. 
English writers translating from German, French, and other 
foreign languages, refer to a benignant and a malignant form of 
the disease, but from my experience with venereal diseases of 
horses in the past, as well as from observations in the present out¬ 
break, I am obliged to take exception to the generally accepted 
ideas of English writers and translators, and separate the so-called 
benign form from the disease under consideration as a wholly dis¬ 
tinct venereal disorder, the reason for which I shall more fully 
allude to later, and we therefore prefer to discard the term mala¬ 
die du coit and follow the nomenclature of writers of human 
medicine, denominating the fatal constitutional disease under con- 
sideration, equine syphilis, resembling closely as it does the 
syphilis of man, and applying the name equine chancre, or chan¬ 
croid, to the benign, local, eruptive, venereal disorder which 
