REPORTS OF CASES. 
243 
mare, or in some way received a severe injury. After two or 
three days other joints would be swollen, but often before any¬ 
thing but a hurt was suspected the colt would die. 
In two of these cases the writer had the opportunity to make 
post mortem examinations. In both cases the cavity of one hock 
joint was distended with thick pus, and the capsules of the knees 
and fetlock joints were filled and distended with serum. The 
kidneys were congested, and only a little high colored urine was 
found in either bladder. The bowels of one colt were excessively 
constipated; the other had been the subject of mucous diarrhoea. 
In both cases the pericardium was distended with serum. 
These, then, were manifestly cases of rheumatic arthritis and 
pericarditis ; in most of the cases of this character the true nature 
of the difficulty had not been understood. Probably very few of 
them were seen by any veterinary surgeon or had any appropriate 
treatment. I shall be glad to learn if any other parts of the 
country have suffered in a similar manner, or whether the same 
difficulty has been more promptly recognized and more success¬ 
fully treated elsewhere. 
ANTHRAX IN THE WEST. 
By G. S. Agersborg, D.V.S. 
In one of his able and instructive lectures before the students 
of the American Veterinary College last session, Dr. L. McLean 
propounded the new theory that in anthrax districts nearly all 
cattle had in their blood, in a dormant or latent state, bacteria 
which developed and multiplied rapidly in the animals when 
being driven fast. This theory was greatly at variance 
w/th our experience here in the northwest, where the first 
thing we do when symptoms of anthrax present themselves in 
an animal is to bleed him-and then drive him as rapidly as he 
can run until he becomes nearly exhausted, and very often the 
best results follow. The general outbreak of anthrax this spring 
in south-eastern Dakota among swine on widely separated farms, 
and in all cases under the same circumstances, led me to the be¬ 
lief that Dr. McLean’s observations in the south-west were correct. 
