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CENTRAL VETERINARY MEDICAL SOCIETY. 
an eruption will always be induced, if not there already, or be 
increased, if it be there already, by friction. 
Mr. Burrell remarked that he thought the Canadian boil or 
pustule had very unhappy names. The disease appeared to him 
to be like a papule in the first instance; then there was a hard 
crust formed; and the matter was found on dressing the crust, 
which was hard, dark, and yellow, with suppuration underneath 
it. It did not appear like an ordinary skin eruption, but firstly 
there was a hard elevation, then a dry crust; and if you broke 
that up you came to the pustular matter. 
Mr. Fleming inquired if there was any general disturbance in 
the health of the animals, and whether the temperature had been 
taken, and was the appetite impaired, or were there any other 
general symptoms of disturbance ? He had forgotten to men¬ 
tion, that in regard to the living animal they could very readily 
examine the skin by clipping out small morsels of the skin 
with sharp scissors where diseased. Hr. Thien and himself had 
recently been investigating some of the maladies of the horses’ 
skin, and they had been able to clip out little morsels with a 
sharp pair of scissors, so easily as to be almost painless to the 
animal; thus they could get the living skin and prepare it 
directly for observation. He thought if this method were pur¬ 
sued they would be able to arrive at the pathology of the 
disease and be able to discover whether it was due to a 
parasite. He thought not, because there was no irritation; 
whereas in parasitic diseases they usually had a large amount of 
local irritation, but there was nothing of the kind in the cases 
which had been mentioned. He was rather inclined to think it 
was not parasitic. However, if any gentleman would adopt his 
suggestion and snip out a small portion of the skin with sharp 
scissors, and give it to any histologist, or he would himself take 
a portion, he thought they would be able to discover something 
of the seat of the malady. He also thought that inoculation 
would be a very good thing, it was so readily performed on the 
horse, that there should be no hesitation whatever in resorting 
to it, and that would at once test whether the malady was trans¬ 
missible by the conveyance of the matter of the pus from a 
diseased animal to a healthy one, and settle the question so far. 
Mr. Woodger, junr., said he could not throw much light on 
the subject, as he had known but two cases, both of which were 
foreign horses, and both in one stable. They showed the disease 
some three days after being purchased from a dealer. They soon 
recovered, and the gentleman who possesses them says they have 
had no return of the disease. He did not think the maize had 
anything to do with the disease. Among the General Omnibus 
Company’s horses which he attended, where there were about 
