AZOTURI A. 
203 
Baker desciibes azoturia as a blood disease, of a plethoric type, 
characterized by sudden prostration, and inability to rise when 
down, caused by exercise after a spell of idleness, and during 
idleness high feed, giving rise to too much nutrition in the 
blood, an excess of urea, and non-elimination of effete material. 
All ages, sexes and breeds are subject to it, but it is most often 
seen in horses of first cross, as a blooded stud with a com¬ 
mon mare. 
Etiology. — We find azoturia in horses that have been 
highly fed and too little exercised. We find the urine over¬ 
loaded with urea. Urea is the nitrogenous constituent of the 
urine, and in feeding highly-nitrogenous food we get an excess 
of the urea, causing the urine to become thick and dark or 
coffee-colored. Williams says the blood is charged with a 
superabundant quantity of albumen, unappropriated by the tis¬ 
sues, and that exercise, by increasing the rapidity of the circu¬ 
lation, and the respiratory movements, induces a rapid oxida¬ 
tion of such superabundant albumen, whereby it is transformed 
into urea, hippuric acid, etc., with which the blood becomes 
overloaded ; and the kidneys stimulated to excrete what is del¬ 
eterious. Albumen is occasionally found in the urine, but this 
is by no means constant, its presence, however, points to an 
aggravated form of the disease. 
SEMIOLOGY. —In giving the symptoms I will describe a few 
cases I treated within a short period of one day last March. 
Mr. R-, living four miles west of Farmington, Ill., came in 
haste and gave me the following symptoms and history. That 
his neighbor had started for town, driving a fine draft mare, and 
she became very lame, broke out in a sweat, went down, and 
was unable to get up, and he was of the opinion that she had 
slipped and strained her back; also his mate had slipped and 
fell in the barn, both at home was suffering intense pain. The 
weather had been stormy, and he kept his horses housed in the 
stable for ten days without exercise. In the morning he had 
turned two of the horses in the barn-lot for exercise. In half an 
hour he decided to stable them, as one of them went very lame. 
