Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 4 (of 5)Law, James
Science
Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 4 (of 5)
Law, James
Veterinary medicine
The conveyance of the virus on the _clothes of attendants_ has been
alleged by Friedberger and Fröhner, and considering that it has been
noted to pass over intervals of about half a mile without the
intervention of any horse, it must have been wafted on the air, or
conveyed on the surface of man or non-equine beast.
Jensen and Clark allege that the contagium may be conveyed to mares by
_coition, for months_ after the stallion has shown all outward signs of
recovery. This would be entirely in keeping with the analogous fact in
swine plague.
_Inoculation._ Experimental inoculations have transmitted the disease
with difficulty and uncertainty. Those of Hertwig, Nocard, Arloing,
Labat, Friedberger, Trasbot, Pasteur and others came to naught. Even the
transfusion of the blood of the sick, proved as harmless as the
inoculation of the serous exudate. A probable explanation is found in
the extreme diffusibility of the germ of equine influenza, which spreads
over a city or county in a few days, attacking practically all equine
animals. Inoculation is necessarily made at the time of the prevalence
of influenza and at such a time all horses in a wide area are likely to
be suffering from the affection. Those that are unaffected and therefore
apparently available for experiment, are the immune animals. If they
were susceptible the probability is that they would speedily show the
disease through infection drawn from another source than the
inoculation. If the inoculated animal failed to contract the disease,
and yet very shortly afterward became infected by simple exposure, there
would be some basis for alleging that inoculation was always
inoperative. Dieckerhoff, on the other hand, transmitted the disease to
healthy horses by subcutaneous and intravenous inoculation of the blood
of the sick, and the same seems to be true of inoculations of the
cultures of the cocco-bacillus by Lignieres.
_Bacteriology._ Our knowledge of the bacteria of equine influenza is as
yet very imperfect and uncertain. Galtier and Violet found streptococci
and diplococci in the blood and tissues of cases showing intestinal
lesions, and held that they were derived from musty fodder. Injections
of infusions of such fodder into the trachea of the horse produced
broncho-pneumonia, double pleuro-pneumonia, and at times intestinal or
meningeal congestion. But there is no proof that the malady so caused,
passed with the certainty and rapidity of equine influenza from horse to
horse in the same stable.
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