829 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTINENTAL VETERINARY 
JOURNALS. 
By John Henry Steel, M.R.C.V.S., F.Z.S., Demonstrator 
of Anatomy at the Royal Veterinary College. 
[Continued from p. 770.) 
Summary. —“ On a Flesh Diet for Horses,” from the 
Recueil de Medecine Veterinaire. “ On Gangrenous Stoma¬ 
titis,” by M. Lenglen, from the same. “On Filaria 
lachrymalis causing Inflammation of the Eye of a Cow,” 
by A. Perdan ; “ Paralysis of the (Esophagus of a Cow,” 
by Dr. V. Ow ; “Yellow Fever in Horses and Dogs, ” by 
Dr. Beauville; from the Monatsschrift des Vereines dev 
Thierarzte , in Oesterreich , November, 1880. 
The power of digesting animal matters of a doughy con¬ 
sistence, in a state of fermentation, had been discerned and 
examined by the Arabs of the desert, who—as our colleague, 
M. Laquerriere, teaches us in an interesting article on 
“ Feeding the Horse with Horseflesh”'—from time immemo¬ 
rial cooked cakes into which the flesh of camels largely en¬ 
tered. These were designed for their horses, and gave a 
highly nutritious diet in small bulk and very portable. This 
Arabian practice, proved useful by the experience of ages, 
and now explained by science, ought to encourage us to un¬ 
dertake and carry out experiments as to the use for food by 
the horse, and especially the army horse, of cakes in which the 
meat has been incorporated and digested during fermentation. 
In his article published in the Abeille Medicate (3rd June, 
1879) M. Laquerriere recounts the trials he made, during the 
siege of Metz, to feed a certain number of horses on horse ¬ 
flesh, and he was able to determine by these experiments, 
which were interrupted by the disastrous capitulation of 
28th October, “ that the horse can perfectly eat, digest, and 
assimilate raw or cooked animal matter.” Since, then, the 
horse can be transformed into a carnivore, nothing is more 
logical, in a besieged town above all places, where the sup¬ 
plies are daily decreasing, than that advantage should be 
taken of this special aptitude to maintain his strength by 
means of the flesh of defunct animals of his species, and thus 
to keep in good condition for work such an important 
“ arm of war” as the horse. Such is M. Laquerriere’s view, 
as explained in his note, and illustrated experimentally at 
Metz. His experiments, indeed, are conclusive. If, in 
liii. 57. 
