OSTEO-POROSIS. 
457 
rated society with a membership of over one thousand ; each 
member owns at least one horse and most all of them have their 
horses protected by insurance in their society. 
Brooklyn grocers as a class do not believe in swapping 
horses, therefore when a young animal finds its way into a gro¬ 
cer’s stable the chances are that he will remain there as long as 
he is fit for work and will be penned up in a small single stall 
with hardly room to He down, and compelled to inhale the 
close atmosphere contaminated with foul-smelling gases, and no 
doubt millions of microscopic organisms, generated by decayed 
wooden floors and the damp urine and manure-saturated soil 
under the floors from eighteen to twenty hours each day. 
Among these horses I have found osteo-porosis extremely 
prevalent, and out of a total mortality according to the records 
of the society of from four and one-half to five per cent, per 
annum, one and one-half per cent, is caused by this disease 
alone, the victims either dying from exhaustion when down 
and unable to rise or being destroyed as unfit for further use. 
I believe I am safe in saying that from five to six per cent, of 
all the grocers’ horses in Brooklyn, kept under conditions de¬ 
scribed above are suffering from osteo-porosis in more or less 
advanced stages. I know of several one-horse stables of this 
kind in which two or three horses, which were examined by 
me when purchased and found in good general health, de¬ 
veloped this disease successively within a year or two. 
Now, let us for a moment consider the existence of this dis¬ 
ease among horses kept in large, airy, well-ventilated and prop¬ 
erly drained stables, which are obliged to spend from eight to 
twelve hours in harness and are therefore out in the open air. 
Sixteen years’ experience as veterinarian to the stables of 
A. and S., a large dry-goods house in Brooklyn, keeping over 
one hundred and twenty-five head of ordinary common-bred de¬ 
livery horses, has not revealed one case of osteo-porosis. Dur¬ 
ing my ten years’ connection with D. and S., owning a stable 
of one hundred and fifty heavy brewers’ horses ; fifteen years 
connection with O. and D* stables of about sixty head of brew- 
