54 
CENTRAL VETERINARY MEDICAL SOCIETY. 
tional; and as it was a very troublesome malady, and to a large 
extent unfitted a horse for work, he thought it was just as well 
that they should be able to ascertain whether it was infectious 
or contagious. He had written to his friend at Bath advising 
him to take all possible precautions to prevent his horses coming 
into contact with other horses, directly or indirectly, and had told 
him his own suspicions that the malady was contagious. His 
friend's horses had escaped so far, but he was naturally anxious, 
as almost every horse in the city had the affection. 
Mr. Rowe said that, although his district was very near Mr. 
Fleming's, he had not met with a single case. He was not aware 
there was any epizootic of any description till the president 
mentioned it. Mr. Mavor had told him that he had seen the disease 
in a large number of horses and in his children. He said—“If 
you mean the boil disease, my children have had it as well as the 
horses." That morning he had spoken to Mr. Daniel, who told him 
he had had over 200 horses affected by it, some severely, in his 
own yard at Piccadilly, but that the horses were chiefly American 
horses connected with the tramway work. 
Mr. Burrell, junr., said when he read Professor Axe's notice 
as to the epizootic skin disease, he was in some doubt as to 
the particular disease to which he referred. In his own practice 
two skin diseases had been very prevalent for the last month, 
one of them he should call eczema, and the particular disease 
to which the president referred “ Canadian boils," and which, 
he was inclined to think, was caused by a vegetable parasite, 
something analogous to ringworm. It was certainly contagious. 
He remembered one instance in which that was shown very 
markedly; one of the horses was introduced into a stable where 
all the other horses were healthy, and the clothing was changed 
about so that the same suit was not always placed on the same 
horse, and the disease went fairly through the stable, and every 
fresh horse introduced that had the clothing on had it. The 
position of the disease about the withers he thought tended rather 
to prove the disease to be contagious. It could very readily be 
understood that it would be carried on the pad. The cloth lies 
closer to the skin about the withers. If correct in viewing it as 
a parasitic disease, he thought it would tend to prove the 
correctness of that view, that the boils broke out just about the 
withers. He also had noticed it along underneath the crupper, on 
either side of the tail, and under where the kicking strap would 
come. He might also say that the disease had occurred equally 
among saddle horses and harness horses, and whether clipped or 
unclipped there was no difference in that respect. He had treated 
the cases as parasitic in most instances, dressing the so-called 
boils with tincture of iodine, or a pretty powerful solution of 
