34 
HORSE-SICKNESS IN SOUTH AFRICA. 
occasionally happen in the winter at the coast, generally when 
there is no more rain than usual, and this year after a summer 
remarkably free from it, it commenced in that district about 
the middle of April and extended into the third week in May, 
a period unusually late for it. 
This disease manifests itself in different forms, viz. the 
dikkop, black-tongue, and throat-sickness, characterised by 
external tumours, besides the most common form without any 
local swellings; all, however, are identical, I believe, in the 
condition of the blood, and in the lungs and intestines being 
more or less affected. 
In whatever form it appears it often begins very suddenly, 
either during or after exercise; at other times the horse is dull 
and does not feed well for some days before any urgent 
symptoms appear, except perhaps slight colicy pains; if, how¬ 
ever, a clinical thermometer is used, the temperature is found to 
have risen to 102° or upwards. As a rule, the first thing 
noticed is the accelerated breathing and other symptoms in¬ 
dicative of inflammation of the lungs, such as redness of the 
mucous membranes of the eyes, swelling over the eyes, quick 
pulse, cough, coldness of the extremities, scanty urine, &c. 
On listening to the lungs, the sounds vary according to the 
progress the disease has made; in some instances they are 
not much altered, while in others there is an entire absence 
of sound, except in the large tubes, which are found filled with 
yellow frothy mucus giving rise to a bubbling sound at every 
inspiration and expiration. In some instances this mucus is 
discharged in immense quantities from the nostrils at each 
expiration, in others there is no discharge. The whole of 
these symptoms are not always present nor of the same 
severity, scarcely two cases being exactly alike; the tempe¬ 
rature, however, is always high, usually from 105° to 108° 
Fahrenheit. 
In the varieties termed Dikkop, Black-tongue, and Throat- 
sickness, the head and other parts indicated by these terms, 
swell up to a considerable size and interfere with the 
breathing. 
Post-mortem Appearances. 
If the horse has been dead a few hours the body is found 
to be distended with foetid gas, and there is generally a 
quantity of frothy mucus round the nostrils. 
Abdomen .—On cutting into the abdomen dark lines and 
patches are noticed on the intestines; the mesenteric glands 
are tumefied and very dark in colour ; liver and kidneys gorged 
with blood; spleen dark in colour and sometimes enlarged; 
