272 
THE INFLUENZA IN HORSES. 
itself will throw off the malady. But it will run its natural 
course, and while some cases are mild and regular others 
will be complicated and severe. It is the latter for which 
remedial interference is demanded, and this should be guided 
by a sound and well-instructed physician. Day by day it 
may be necessary to change the treatment with the varying 
phases of the disease, whereas the blind administration of a 
nostrum of which you know nothing, save that it is recom¬ 
mended by a man who sells it at from ten to fifty times its 
real market value, is too often the fruitful cause of the com¬ 
plications in question, and of fatal results. 
Whatever medicine is given must be of a supporting and 
stimulating nature. In the early stages of the disease, liquor 
of the acetate of ammonia, in ounce doses, with a little bella¬ 
donna and camphor, may usually be given with advantage 
four or five times a day. Later, when the nasal discharge is 
established, and the body temperature reduced, tonics, such 
as gentian, cinchona, and the preparations of iron, may be 
given. Counter-irritants should be applied to whatever part 
may have become the seat of inflammation, and other means 
employed to correct the various morbid conditions as they 
appear. 
Probability of the Recurrence of the Disease .—The question 
of the probable reappearance of the disease attracts a good 
deal of interest. Some light might be thrown on this 
subject by a knowledge of its causes. But, as in the case 
of other specific fevers, we do not know the conditions 
necessary to generate the malady in a region where it did not 
formerly exist. The past autumn was unusually wet, and 
produced an unwonted amount of the lower forms of organic 
life, meats and vegetables have been preserved with difficulty, 
and fungi and moulds abounded. These conditions were, no 
doubt, favorable to the production, or at least to the per¬ 
petuation, of the poison, but they have often existed inde¬ 
pendently of influenza, and it is irrational to suppose that 
they alone are capable of producing it. The past history of 
the disease, however, shows that it may be expected to recur 
again and again, with intervals extending over a variable 
number of years, and with a scope which is not quite so 
simultaneous and universal, while epizootics like the present, 
which strike down all at once, and load our commerce with 
such a terrible, if temporary, incubus, are to be looked for 
at long intervals, and as altogether exceptional phenomena. 
While the disease is passing away, and our stock is returning 
to its customary good health, it is consolatory to know that 
few animals are liable to a second attack during the same 
