CENTRAL VETERINARY MEDICAL SOCIETY. 53 
militated against one of the causes advanced by the president, as 
possibly being in operation in producing the malady, viz. bad 
ventilation and bad drainage, because the stables were very badly 
drained, and the ventilation was decidedly defective. The only 
case he had seen was that of an officer’s horse, which had been 
purchased and brought from a horse dealer’s stable. That horse 
was affected with the malady, but was evidently recovering, and 
at the end of a week or ten days the skin was quite healthy. 
He had received a letter from Bath a few days ago from a brother 
officer, who said that the disease there was a perfect nuisance, 
that almost every horse in Bath was affected with it, and asking 
his opinion as to its nature. He had made some inquiries among 
the dealers who supply the officers’ chargers, and had found 
that they considered the malady to be contagious; and he 
thought the instance the president had adduced, of a blanket 
from an unaffected horse having conveyed the disease to a healthy 
animal, was one which rather supported that idea of the dealers. 
In the first place, they knew that pus in a fluid state would reach 
the skin of a horse somewhat readily, and might produce a certain 
amount of irritation, but on the blanket it would be dry; and 
they could scarcely believe that dry pus falling on the hair of a 
horse’s skin would have so readily produced this particular 
disease. He was very much inclined to think it must be con¬ 
tagious. However, having had no experience of the malady, he 
had come there more to be informed than to give his experience. 
He had been told by the horse dealers that horses which have 
not been clipped suffer less from the malady ; they told him they 
had no cases of the disease with horses unclipped and unsinged; 
possibly that might go towards explaining the causes of the 
malady. The question was, did the disease affect harness or saddle 
horses, or did it affect both P There was one skin disease very 
common—a sort of eczema, which commences under the saddle, 
and very often extends to the loins, and the sides, and the 
shoulders; with it there is always a large amount of itching, 
and it is very troublesome often with troop horses. There were 
sometimes a large number laid up, especially in the summer; 
they thought the lining of the saddle in hot weather produces this 
irritation of the skin from the bearing of the saddle. He could 
scarcely believe that maize would be likely to produce the 
malady. They had in the stables horses that were fed on maize, 
and yet that disease had not occurred. He was rather inclined 
to think that the disease had been imported into the country ; 
the dealers said that it was not present in the stables till they had 
some foreign horses. It was a very interesting disease, because 
there were so very few maladies of that nature in the horse that 
are contagious, that that one, if contagious, was almost excep- 
