MYOTIC DERMATITIS. 
635 
MYOTIC DERMATITIS. 
By Coleman Nockolds, ist Class Vet., ist Cavalry, Batangas, 
Philippines. 
One of the bugbears of the life of American army horses and 
mules, as well as soldiers in the Philippines, is a troublesome 
complaint known throughout the width and breadth of the land 
as adobe, itch. Everything that is not of the same quality 
and value as its analogy in the United States is spoken of out 
here as adobe , for instance, the Mexican dollar, the mud-like 
stones and brick of which some of the houses are built 5 in fact 
anything that is not the real material, and which takes the place 
of the genuine article, is “ adobe.” In the case of this trouble¬ 
some skin lesion u adobe,” in one sense of the word, is a mis¬ 
nomer, as we find out by experience, both amongst animals and 
ourselves, for once u adobe ” lays claim to its victim, whether 
person or animal, it amounts to the same thing, viz., that they 
have run up against the real thing, and there is not the slight¬ 
est doubt about it. u Adobe itch 1 is really a demonstration of 
the amount of torture and the changes which can take place in 
the skin of either man or animal as a result of the workings of 
a vegetable parasite in a country where atmospheric conditions 
and the nature of the soil all tend towards its full development, 
and allows it to live and thrive to the fullest extent of its para¬ 
sitic existence. 
kC Adobe itch ” is a contagious cutaneous affection caused by 
ane or more species of fungi belonging to the genus Trichophy- 
f ° n , and most probably also one of the genus Sepidophyton , so 
t is really “ adobe,” and not true u itch,” which, as is well 
•mown, is caused by various tribes of the Acarina, the most 
prominent of which is th z Sarcoptiiuz, which causes most of the 
tches of man and animals. 
These fungi consist of filaments and spores ; the filaments 
ire tubular, one tube being made up of several sections joined 
‘iid to end, some of which contain oval-shaped spores. These 
pores eventually become changed into tubes. The tubes are 
