454 
R. S. HUIDEKOPER. 
known. The author says that the cause has been attributed to 
hot, damp, low stalls, to want of use of the animal, to over-feed¬ 
ing, especially with nitrogenous food, etc. Within recent years 
the hygienic condition of the stables lias been greatly improved 
and the ground has been tilled deeper and with greater care. 
The work-horse, which is almost exclusively the animal af¬ 
fected, now works in winter as well as in summer in South Ger¬ 
many. The disease appears most frequently in January and 
February and least so in September and October. 
Immobility is much more frequently observed in the months 
of March and April and May, when the horses are hard worked, 
than in November and December, when they have little to do. 
In Wurtemburg the disease is called Kleekrankheit ” orclover 
disease.” The Bavarian veterinary report of 1874 showed that 
the disease appeared only in lime soils, where the leguminous 
plants abound. Immobility is not found among the horses in 
the high Alpine regions, where clover, etc., are not produced. 
The author practiced for many years in the Mitterfels dis¬ 
trict of Bavaria and found the disease almost entirely in the 
country supplied by streams from limestone districts, and only 
met with it in rare cases in the valleys and hills free from lime, 
where the leguminous plants are wanting. 
From these circumstances he questioned, what might be the 
substance contained in the leguminous plants, which caused the 
disease. Gerard, a Belgian writer, was the first to assert that the 
leguminosse caused nervous symptoms. He found that it was not 
practicable to give a horse more than one pound of horse beans 
(food containing 17% of nitrogenous matter,) a day. By feeding 
three pounds a day he produced death from paralysis in 8 horses. 
Bettenkoffer and VAit had advanced the theory that excessive 
nitrogenous food caused fermentation of albumen and a pre-dis¬ 
position to fibrinous exudation, but Winckler denies that the ex¬ 
udation is proportioned to the gravity of the symptoms. He 
asserts: 
1st.—We frequently see horses suffering from sub-acute in¬ 
flammation of the brain, bruised and wounded : we do not see more 
exudation in these wounds than in those of sound animals, which 
would be the case, if a special disposition to exudation existed. 
