REMARKABLE AFFECTION AMONG HORSES IN INDIA. 333 
both those imported and country-bred alike), but I may add 
that I have never observed it in a mare; yet here, too, my 
experience is limited. From having seen the affection occur 
and recur in numerous horses during an experience extending 
over several years, apparently unattended in a single instance 
with pain or the injurious results to be looked for from the 
disease, I hope I may assume that what I describe is not 
heematuria. The question naturally follows, what is it ? 
Just what I want to know. I have asked several veterinary 
surgeons with whom I have been on terms of intimacy * but 
without obtaining definite information, although I know it 
would willingly have been given. One veterinary surgeon 
attributed the affection to the colouring matter in gram, the 
pulse upon which horses are almost invariably fed in India. 
This definition satisfied me for the time being; but I since 
began to ask myself why the water, in which the gram is 
steeped in most well-managed stables, does not pour off thus 
coloured. I admit it is so slightly, but not to such an extent 
as would support the inference, and the colouring is, in my 
judgment, far more due to the dirt mixed with the gram than 
any extract from its husk. I maintain, too, that the infer¬ 
ence is completely upset by the existence of the deposit 
which I described. Except the above, I never knew any 
European assign a probable cause for the affection, or even 
try to ascertain its real cause. Many men, too, may say, since 
I describe it as so harmless why trouble oneself about it? 
I only assert that it has fortunately proved so within my own 
experience, and I also assert that it indicates a sufficiently 
deranged condition of some important organ to make the 
subject worthy of professional inquiry. Natives, although 
accustomed to view it with habitual indifference, will go 
through the semblance of treatment. They refer almost all 
complaints to one or other of two habits of body, viz. cold 
and hot, for both of which conditions all natives who have 
charge of animals possess many nostrums, or, as they are 
familiarly known, musalahs—for that matter, many Euro¬ 
peans too—and all alike of reputed undoubted efficacy. The 
affection I describe being of the habit “ hot/’ is treated with 
a cooling (literally cold) musalah, a popular one being com¬ 
posed of garlic and buttermilk, with perhaps the addition of 
some equally efficacious ingredient—alum, nitre, all come 
alike. 
“ When unaccustomed to the affection, I was, as a matter 
of course, startled, tried sedatives, and watched for symptoms. 
I have also given diuretics and alteratives in the form of 
nitre, of resin, sulphur, sulphate of antimony, accompanied 
