“Peculiar conditions of the atmosphere have generally the effect of some disorders, which attack men and animals to so great an extent as to be denominated the prevailing diseases of the time--such as cholera, typhus fever, influenza, and many others. These results are not always contemporary with the weather, which in reality produces them. Indeed, they most frequently make their appearance some little time after a change of temperature has taken place, by which certain influences have been established, which become the sources of disorder in the functions of animal economy. Such disorders as those which are peculiar to any particular districts cannot fail to receive an impulse from such a season as the one we have lately experienced. Kennel lameness ranks among the number as likely to be one over which these powers may be expected to have a very considerable control. Much has been said and much has been written on the subject, and many possibilities have been suggested, and remedies proposed, which have so little reason for their basis, that it appears extraordinary how they could ever have entered the brain of reasonable and thinking men: but before going into a detail, I will introduce a few remarks on endemic diseases, for the purpose of more clearly establishing the point, ‘that certain situations produce the complaint, and will for ever be the cause of its continuance so long as those situations are preserved’; and also that certain modes of treatment are the causes of its prevailing in some instances with a greater degree of inveteracy. Indeed I have no hesitation in declaring, that bad management will, even on healthy sites, produce a modified degree of rheumatism, which assumes the name of kennel lameness. “There are certain diseases which afflict the human body, and which are found to rage in particular localities, termed endemic. They are attributable to some peculiarities of the soil, the air, the food, and in some instances of the habits of the inhabitants. Poverty, want of cleanliness, and, the consequence of poverty, bad and insufficient food and raiment, may be enumerated among the most conspicuous causes. A removal of them will naturally be followed by the disappearance of the endemic. So with hounds: if a slight degree of rheumatism exists, produced by irregular treatment, alter the treatment, and if those already affected do not recover, the list of invalids will not be augmented by its appearance in fresh subjects. Some may oppose me on this point, by observing, if bad management produces the complaint in a slight degree, may it not do so in a greater? To this I answer distinctly, No; inasmuch as in some kennels the disorder has never been known to emanate, but that unsound hounds brought from other kennels have recovered: besides which, there are many kennels in which the disorder rages where the hounds are treated precisely upon the same system as in establishments which are perfectly free from it.