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
_Acquired immunity_ must of course be reckoned with. After a non-fatal
attack this is usually to be relied on for several years or even for the
rest of the lifetime, yet it varies with the individual animals, and,
under the baleful combination of a specially potent germ and strongly
conducive accessory causes, it may become worn out in a year. Yet the
older horses can always be trusted to show a large measure of this
immunity, so that in the absence of extraordinary epizoötics it is
mainly the young that suffer, and it is only when a country has had no
general invasion for a length of time, or when the germ has acquired an
unusual pathogenic potency, or when these two conditions conjoin, that
the invasion of the equine population becomes universal, as it virtually
was in the United States and Canada in 1872–3. Under other circumstances
the germ, temporarily shorn of its power, lingers in city and dealers
stables, biding its time until circumstances become more favorable for a
new general outbreak.
Immunity largely explains the comparative mildness of the last cases in
any particular locality. The more susceptible animals are attacked first
and most severely, while the partially immune ones, which for a time
resist, throw off the disease with greater readiness. The explanation
has been sought in a lessening potency of the germ, but though this may
hold true of some cases, it manifestly does not apply when slight
lingering cases only are left in one locality, and the disease is
advancing over the neighboring state with all its original force and
vigor.
_Incubation._ This appears to vary within certain limits. When during an
epizoötic a sick horse is brought into a new locality and stable, other
cases usually develope in from one to three days. Trasbot gives examples
of one day, Salle, Cadeac and others of two, others claim four, seven
and even, exceptionally, fifteen days. One reason for an apparently
prolonged incubation may be found in the seclusion of the germs in the
alimentary canal, so that they escape only when passed with the fæces.
The pathogenic potency of individual germs, and the varying
susceptibility of the animals exposed must also be taken into account.
_Symptoms._ Equine influenza is liable to show a special predilection
for a given set of organs in different epizoötics, so that we find
descriptions of the different forms as independent types or even
separate diseases: as the _catarrhal form_, _thoracic form_, _abdominal
form_, _bilious form_, _nervous form_, _pink eye_, _infectious
cellulitis_, and _rheumatic influenza_. These forms may, however, appear
in different subjects in the same epizoötic, and when they are not due
to complications, may be looked on as a concentration of the morbid
processes on one class of organs rather than another.
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