900 
COLEMAN NOCKOLDS. 
SOME FURTHER REMARKS ON “ SURRA.” 
By Coleman Nockolds, ist Class Vet., ist Cavalry, U. S. Army, 
Batangas, P. I. 
Since remarking that this disease had broken out among 
the army transport and cavalry animals, I have been able to in¬ 
vestigate it more thoroughly, owing to the immense number of 
animals that have been attacked and are at the present time 
suffering from it. Some idea may be formed of the enormous 
loss of life it has and is incurring when it is known that under 
my observation alone out of one engineer’s train of eighty-five 
mules, seventy-six have already succumbed and thirty-one out of 
another train of forty animals have died, and the remainder are 
seriously affected with this very deadly disease. Besides, there 
are an alarming number of troop horses and quartermaster’s ani¬ 
mals that have died or are dying. Horses are not as liable to 
“ Surra ” as are mules, as the proportion of deaths is about one 
horse to ten mules. I am fully convinced that the organism is 
introduced into the system by the ingestion of grass cut from 
swampy lands, which is almost the only forage obtainable here 
at this time, as American hay and grain are scarce. No doubt 
at some stations the water used for drinking purposes infects 
animals, but that is not the case here because our water supply 
is obtained from the ice plant and is free from the organisms. 
It is certain that flies, and possibly other insects, carry the dis¬ 
ease from one animal to another ; this has been demonstrated 
to my satisfaction. That the blood of infected animals contains 
the specific haematozoon is also positive, as I have found them 
in the blood of many affected animals ; also that the blood from 
infected horses when injected into a healthy animal will cause 
the disease, I have demonstrated by inoculating a number of 
monkeys and dogs. The most remarkable thing to me is that 
of all the veterinarians that I have met out here and that various 
officers I have conversed with in Surra-stricken districts know 
nothing of the disease, and confess that they have never heard 
of it; some have had large numbers destroyed because they sus- 
