ikely to be increased.
Sometimes, however, as a result of poor circulation and irregular
distribution of the blood, the body may be warmer than normal, while the
extremities (the legs and ears) may be cold. Where the general surface
of the body becomes cold it is evident that the small blood vessels in
the skin have contracted and are keeping the blood away, as during a
chill, or that the heart is weak and is unable to pump the blood to the
surface, and that the animal is on the verge of collapse.

The skin is moist, to a certain degree, at all times in a healthy horse.
This moisture is not in the form of a perceptible sweat, but it is
enough to keep the skin pliable and to cause the hair to have a soft,
healthy feel. In some chronic diseased conditions and in fever, the skin
becomes dry. In this case the hair has a harsh feel that is quite
different from the condition observed in health, and from the fact of
its being so dry the individual hairs do not adhere to one another, they
stand apart, and the animal has what is known as "a staring coat." When,
during a fever, sweating occurs, it is usually an indication that the
crisis is passed. Sometimes sweating is an indication of pain. A horse
with tetanus or azoturia sweats profusely. Horses sweat freely when
there is a serious impediment to respiration; they sweat under
excitement, and, of course, from the well-known physiological causes of
heat and work. Local sweating, or sweating of a restricted area of the
body, denotes some kind of nerve interference.

Swellings of the skin usually come from wounds or other external causes
and have no special connection with the diagnosis of internal diseases.
There are, however, a number of conditions in which the swelling of the
skin is a symptom of a derangement of some other part of the body. For
example, there is the well-known "stocking," or swelling of the legs
about the fetlock joints, in influenza. There is the soft swelling of
the hind legs that occurs so often in draft horses when standing still
and that comes from previous inflammation (lymphangitis) or from
insufficient heart power. Dropsy, or edema of the skin, may occur
beneath the chest or abdomen from heart insufficiency or from chronic
collection of fluid in the chest or abdomen (hydrothorax, ascites, or
anemia). In anasarca or purpura hemorrhagica large soft swellings appear
on any part of the skin, but usually on the legs, side of the body, and
about the head.