RHINOSPORIDIOSIS IN EQUINES

                                                BY

                        LAKSHMI SAHAI, M.Sc., M.R.C.V.S.

                (Veterinary) Disease Investigation Officer, Bihar

                    (Received for publication on 9th April, 1938)

                                (With Plates XIII and XIV)

THE first published reference to the occurrence of Rhinosporidiosis in
animals in this country is to be found in a paper entitled " Rhinosporidiosis
in Cattle " read by the late Krishnamurti Ayyar at the seventh Congress
of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine held in Calcutta in 1927,
wherein after reviewing the literature on the subject, he recorded the discovery
of the parasite in growths from the nasal cavities of two bullocks and one cow
in the Tanjore district of Madras. Up till now this has been the only record of
the occurrence of the disease in bullocks either in this country or outside.

Later, in 1932, Ayyar described Rhinosporidial growths in a mare which
also came from the Tanjore district. Though this was the first case of its kind
to be recorded in a horse in India, the parasite had been described earlier in a
horse, by Zschokke [1913] in growths sent to him from South Africa. The
growth from the nasal cavity in which the parasite was found was of the size
of an egg, reddish in colour and hard with a rough outer surface and inside it
were found cysts which were filled with a parasite which was very closely allied
to Rhinosporidium seeberi, the parasite found in man and which Zschokke
termed Rhinosporidium equi.

In 1926, two further cases were recorded in the same country in mules by
Quinlan and de Koch, and in 1928 another in a horse in Mentevedeo by Cordero
and Vogeslang, the lesions in all these cases being more or less alike and in the
nature of irregular tumour-like masses situated on the nasal mucous membrane.

Including the case recorded by Krishnamurti Ayyar, there are on record
only five cases of Rhinosporidiosis in equines. The object of this small note
is to place on record another case of equine Rhinosporidiosis in a country-
bred pony at Bargarh in the Sambalpur district of Orissa.

During the author's visit to Bargarh in February, 1937, Veterinary Assist-
ant Surgeon Y. K. Viswanathan, in-charge of the local Veterinary Dispensary,
showed him a small growth which he had removed from the nasal cavity of a
horse. Suspecting that it might be a Rhinosporidial growth, the writer
brought it to Patna where the diagnosis was confirmed by histological examina-
tion.

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