AN INQUIRY. 
333 
CAUSES. 
“ The primary cause or causes of this disease are as obscure 
as its intimate nature, though there is no lack of hypothetical 
reasoning on the subject. Rodlaff gives, as a general cause, an 
atmospherical, epizootic constitution, which gradually modifies 
the animal economy, until the evolution of the disease is possible. 
He also invokes cosmo-telluric influences, and asks if the fre¬ 
quency of the storms in the mountains of Bohemia and Silesia 
has not contributed to render the malady more common than in 
previous years. This distinguished veterinarian also believed 
that hereditary tendency, a catarrhal condition, cutaneous erup¬ 
tions, betraying a lymphatic dyscracy, were all so many predis¬ 
posing causes. 
Hertwig and Renner attributed its production to fornication 
or beastiality; and Dumas mentions that the Arabs, believing it 
to be contagious and incurable, think that the male ass infects 
the mare, the former acquiring it from the female ass, which is 
diseased through an abominable offense committed upon it by the 
Arabs suffering from syphilis, and who fancy that this odious 
practice will cure them.” (Fleming, ibid , p. 12.) 
This theory is beyond comparison the most plausible and rea¬ 
sonable of the many offered, and we shall follow it out to its 
close. 
There are many theorizers—men of ability—whose minds 
seem to demand some marvellous conception for a cause; the 
more marvellous, the more nearly they imagine they are approach¬ 
ing the truth. They remind one of the witness who stated that 
he had read “ Gulliver’s Travels,” the stories of Munchausen, and 
the Flying Wife,” including “ Robinson Crusoe,” and believed 
them all; but that Wirt’s “ Life of Patrick Henry” was a little 
more than he could stand. 
SYMPTOMS. 
The symptoms of this equine disease are exceedingly numer¬ 
ous, and we can mention only a few of them—the most import¬ 
ant—in this place. We may say here—though it will be inferred 
—that it is our opinion that this venereal disease is only glanders 
