Notes on Diseases of the Horse: Cause, Symptoms and Treatment

This instrument is employed for taking the internal temperature of the body, which is most conveniently done by placing the instrument for about three minutes in the animal’s rectum. Owing to the almost general adoption of this method, the expression “internal temperature” is used as a rule to signify “rectal temperature”; although the respective temperatures of different parts of the body vary to a slight extent. The practice of placing the thermometer in the mouth, as is the custom in human medicine, is not suitable to animals, owing to the danger of the patient breaking the glass instrument with the teeth.

The indications afforded by the clinical thermometer are valuable guides as to the state of the animal’s health at the time, or what it will shortly be. Thus, in a horse at rest under ordinary conditions, if there be a rise of three or four degrees without the animal evincing any other sign of illness, we may be assured that disease in some form will, after a day or two, manifest itself in him. During illness, a temperature of, say, 106° F. or more points to a condition of great danger.

The clinical thermometer is especially useful in indicating the state of an animal during infective diseases and diseases of the organs of breathing. A fall in temperature, when it has been abnormally high, will generally point to a favorable termination of the disease; although in some cases it is the precursor of rapidly approaching death.