188 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
of febrile maladies, and described as a variety of enteritis or diar¬ 
rhoea.” 
# Wllen ifc is discovered by an attending veterinarian that an 
animal is the subject of fever, it is his duty to ascertain whether 
it is idiopathic or symptomatic. Whether, as Da Costa puts it, 
it is a complement to a disease, or as far as can be ascertained, 
the disease itself.” Further on he says in reference to continued 
fevers that, “ it is now well understood that witli few exceptions 
they are characterized by the want of definite and invariable ana¬ 
tomical lesions. That in all constant changes occur in the blood, 
or in parts of the nervous system, is highly probable, but these 
changes are not of a nature to be recognized by our present means 
of research. Certainly there is no invariable injury perceptible 
m the organs of the body; sometimes one, sometimes another 
suffers; sometimes nearly all; at times none. When we con¬ 
trast this with symptomatic fever, the difference is striking. The 
visceral lesions, then, of an idiopathic fever are not the start¬ 
ing point of the fever; but rather secondary and uncertain 
complications, influenced by and subordinate to the profound dis¬ 
turbance of the whole system. In idiopathic fever the fever con¬ 
trols the lesion ; in symptomatic fever the lesion controls the 
fever.” 
Now, starting with these conceded points as a guide, when I 
find an epizootic influence prevailing, and find a patient suffering 
distinctive catarrhal symptoms, with other symptoms common to 
continued fevers, I can readily decide it to be a case of catarrhal 
fever, or what is*called influenza. 
On the contrary, when I find an equine idiopathic fever pre¬ 
vailing, in which catarrhal symptoms are conspicuously absent, as 
in the so-called pink-eye, then I find much difficulty in deciding 
it to be a catarrhal fever. In the disease known as pink-eye, so 
far as I am able to discern, the most conspicuous seat of lesion is 
the connective or cellular tissue. Catarrhal symptoms, as a rule, 
are absent, and I am therefore inclined to think that cellulitic fe¬ 
ver is a more appropriate name than influenza, which by long 
usage and common consent represents catarrhal fever. Neither 
do I think “ epizootic cellulitis” a proper name for the disease. 
Tins would imply that the fever is merely symptomatic, and not 
