The Indianapolis leader. (Indianapolis, Ind.) 1879-1890, 1881-10-22

The community seems to be kept in per.
petual agitation, fearing that . supposed
disease has been transmitted from st. Louis
to our city.
Snch fool rumors remind one of the old
| adage, Great crv and little wool as Himper
said when shearing his hogs" On seeing
| the St Louis scare-cr0w and another in the
News, l started out to see our city veterina-
rians, hoping that they had better sense and
| judgment than to take one of the symptoms
| of q disease for the real disease, and. am
happy to say, found them not such fools.
first met DR.. Greaner, then DR.. Phillips
| both denied seeing any such disease, and
existence of such disease On my way to
DR.. Pritcnard's Office 1 met that gentleman
in the street. and on inquiry about his ex-
perience in such q disease received as an
answer that he met q few cases of infiamed
eyes, not amounting to much If / remember
correctly. Just so; such are met with and
will be as long as horses are subject to In
poor mentioned in the Scripture, those we
have with us all the time, and will continue
| am glad, indeed, that the three and /
agree exactly. and have sense enough to
know the difference between pink and red
and an infamed eve from one of the symp-
toms OF we'll known constitutional diseases
Sunday morning however, while enjoying
thC icpOcc VI ScTculIy lTOm Tile Iell QcStrOy-
er OF our equine race, hoping that the ebb
tide of quackery had cleared all apprehen-
sion of danger from our shore, the
Sentinel came to our door laden
to the guards with pink-eye.
In the name of George Washington and the
Continental Congress, have we somebody
seeking cheap not0riety, or isit no more than
penny joke? Hoping it is the latter we
will take it in fun; but will say that it is
high time that the public should tire of this
thing of merely seeking the assistance of
newspaper reporters in trying to climb above
their capacity In any branch of business OF
course the reporters can not know anything
wrong about the design. and they are wei
coined back to the Office with their store of
valuable news as a bee laden with honey is
to the hive, but the news is not worth the
ink on the paper.
And now l say to the general public, this
phantom pink-eyeis no disease at all of itself,
but symptom or effect of other diseases,
such as influenza complicated with infiu-
enza catarrh, or strangles, or both, one being
an Inflammation of one or more parotid
glapf. The other an Inflammation of the
sU' naxillary, and the other of the thoratic
OF nc Is membrane.
L.. odd, a very able English writer, In
boot written by him, says: at an early
perioi when the veterinary profession was
in II nfancy in England, epidemic catarrh,
iuHut I'd anu sIIdnglet were termed pink
eye by quacks whenever the eyes became in
famed, and it does appear that they stick to
it to the present eu
DR.. SpOODer, another eminent veterinary
surgeon and writer, says: Speaking of epi-
demic ,atarrh, the bowels were not much dis
turhed, but the faces were enveloped with
thin Shiny mucus, butin many cases the affec-
tion of the eyes was so violent as to amount
to temporary blindness; and adds: Edem- |
attic swelling of the legs was enormous
We have had sporadic cases of the present |
scare-crow b0 th in this country anc Europe,
to my certaio knowledge. in the last forty |
seven years. Either in 1842 or 1843 we had |
it all over the British Isles was then in |
Ireland, and no man was ignorant enough |
to call it pink-eye.
The most formidable case of combined
influenza and catarrh ever met was a young
mare of Commissioner MOntgomery's of |
Shelby County, Indiana She was found |
standing in fence corner, her legs so much |
swollen that it was utterly impossible tor |
her to bend them sufficiently to walk from
the orchard to the stable. Her eyes were so |
badly inflamed that the conjunctiva pro-
truded beyond the eyelids, presenting more |
the appearance of q rose. not q pink but a |
red or scarlet rose; the eyeballs protruded at |
least three-fourths of sn inch, minute fibers |
of veins burst, and stream of blood con-
tinued to flow from one and continual |
dropping from the other.
Hoping that we shall have no further
scare, and that every man seeking notoriety
will seek it in some other way, perhaps by |
works that will show, and convince more
fully than inksliDging. lam respectfully.
JOHN N. NAvIN, V. s.. Indianapolis