The management and treatment of the horse in the stable, field, and ...

In the Stable, Field, and on the Road. 49
catarrhal affection. But when this subtle agency exists
in the air and is exerting itself, another phenomenon is
witnessed of an entirely different nature, and of essen-
tially typhoid tendencies, the distinguishing mark or
effect of which is an unusual, peculiar, and general
weakness, a most susceptible system, and the small,
feeble character of the pulse.
Is influenza contagious and infectious ? My own
experience leads me to the belief that it is not. During
the last ten years I have had upwards of one hundred
cases of undoubted influenza, and have watched it very
closely, yet up to the present time I have never seen one
single clear case of the affected animal communicating the
distemper. I have had cases of young horses in the farm
yard all running together, drinking out of the same trough,
eating out of the same manger ; some of them have had
influenza, and others not. We frequently see one or more
horses in a large stable affected, and the horse in the stall
next to the worst case perfectly healthy. I must remind
my readers that contagion, strictly speaking, implies the
capability of certain diseases being produced by actual
contact of the healthy animal with some part of the one
labouring under disease, and not through the medium of
the atmosphere. On the other hand, infection is the word
used to denote the propagation of maladies through the
medium of the air, which becomes charged with the con-
taminating principle given off in the form of exhalations
from the diseased animal, and which excites the like
disease in those animals that are subject to its influence,
they being predisposed to take the malady. Now I come
to the nature of influenza. Most influenzas have been
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