266 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



taught me this, for sometimes iti my eagerness and haste to effect cures, I 

 have overdone the matter by giving too large doses, and made the symptoms 

 worse. 



Ladies and gentlemen, I want to say a little more on the subject of condi- 

 tion powders. As I before stated, the use of condition powders, so called, has 

 become almost universal among owners of animals, and are given indiscrim- 

 inately, especially to horses, without considering what the effect produced 

 may be, or lead to in the future. This keeping an animal perpetually under 

 the influence of a drug, or lot of drugs, until the drug refuses to act in the 

 desired direction, is a pernicious habit, and eventually leads to a state of 

 things altogether undesirable. 



I will give you the formula for preparing a condition powder in general use, 

 and which does not differ materially from most of the popular preparations 

 put up and kept for sale by druggists and merchants generally: Fenugreek, 

 cream of tartar, gentian, sulphur, copperas, or sulphate of iron, saltpeter, 

 rosin, black antimony, and ginger, each one ounce; cayenne, one-half ounce; 

 all to be finely powdered and thoroughly mixed. Dose, one tablespoonful 

 once a day, ordinarily; in extreme cases, twice daily. Now this preparation 

 contains some valuable medicines, which I often use in treating animals 

 that are sick. When called upon to prescribe for sick animals, I often find 

 them, to use a vulgar expression, chuck full of the very medicines we would 

 wish to use for the symptoms manifested, ^ere it not that the symptoms 

 present are largely, if not entirely, due to the effect of the drug itself ; a state 

 of things that places the practitioner in an awkward and embarrassing posi- 

 tion, to say the least. Let us examine a little into the effect produced by 

 sulphur, saltpeter, rosin, antimony, and copperas, on the animal system. 



I will take first sulphur: " Sulphur is a valuable medicine for rheumatism, 

 and various disorders. It is also used with grand success for skin diseases." — 

 Kendall, in his treatise on the horse and his diseases. 



Now I quote from Materia Medica, in Homoeopathic Veterinary Practice. 

 I will not give the symptoms in respect to all the organizations of the body, 

 but will confine myself to the skin and external surface, and the extremities. 

 Sour smelling sweats ; sweats which are developed on particular parts of the 

 body, especially on the extremities, as the fore legs, chest, ears, etc. ; the glands 

 in different parts of the body generally, may be found swollen and inflamed ; 

 the animal is very sensitive of having the hair reversed, the skin being gener- 

 ally acutely sensitive and tender ; decidence, or falling off of the hair, large 

 surfaces remaining bare, being sore, cracked, and excoriated; scurfiness and 

 peeling off of the skin; intense and constant itching of the skin, the animal 

 perpetually rubbing itself; in fact, we get the very worst symptons of skin 

 diseases from the long continued use of sulphur. In respect to the extremities : 

 Nodosities, and swelling of the joints; the skin symptoms generally as already 

 described ; vesicles emitting mutter, and forming scales in the creases of the 

 joints, or folds of the joints; swelling of the legs generally; stiffness and 

 numbness of the legs; affections of the nature of bog-spavins, windgalls, etc. ; 

 dropsical puffing of the legs, etc., etc. 



Saltpeter: This medicine has long been used as a febrifuge, and as a 

 diuretic, and is still held in high esteem by many, but there are other drugs 

 which are better adapted to the treatment of the various diseases for which it 

 has long been used. — Kendall. 



I will not undertake to give the symptoms of this drug, for you see it is laid 

 aside by one of the old school. 



