Notices respecting New Books. 367 



common farriers. The author's views of some of the diseases 

 to which this noble animal is liable, appear to us to be new, and 

 the treatment reconnnended, highly judicious. He ridicules the 

 idea of a vitiated, foul state of the blood and humours being the 

 cause of the grease, the great winter disease of horses that are 

 kept in large crowded towns. It is seen but rarely (in com- 

 parison) in the country, especially among such as are employed 

 in agriculture ; and least of all among those of the latter kind 

 that perform work of a regular kind. No disease to which tlie 

 horse is liable, appears to the author to arise more decidedly from 

 the ordinary management of stables, or to be less a necessary 

 co7isequence of domesticating this animal. In opposition to the 

 opinion of the late professor St. Bel, that this disease is contagious, 

 he urges, that where numbers of horses are all treated in the 

 same way, and exposed to the same exciting cause of disease, 

 nothing can be more natural than that numbers should be at- 

 tacked with similar morbid symptoms — " Stripped of all mysterjr 

 and all the technical language of the schools ; the grease may- 

 be considered, simply, as an inflammation of the skin of the fet- 

 lock joint. The disease is, in truth, the chilblain of the horse." 



" We shall cease to wonder that the skin of the fetlock 



is liable to be attacked with inflammation, especially in the win- 

 ter season, if we consider the peculiar circumstances to which it 



is exposed The seat of the disease is remote from the great 



fountain of life, the heart The fetlocks are exposed to 



greater vicissitudes of heat and cold than any other part of tlie 

 animal — at one moment enveloped in a bed of hot litter and 

 faeces at a temperature of 50" to GO"; the next, exposed to a cur- 

 rent of cold air several degrees below the freezing point ;" — and 

 sometimes standing for hours in snovv^, or bruised ice. '* The 

 skin is frequently not merely imbued with moisture, but with 

 such as is of a most deleterious kind, to a part susceptible of in- 

 flammation, namely, the urine of the animal; which contains 

 a great deal of volatile alkali, even before that salt can be en-, 

 gendered by the putrefactive fermentation of the litter." We r^- 

 pjet that our limits do not permit us to lay before our readers 

 the whole of the author's reasoning and proofs in support of his 

 opinion. Though tlie author considers the grease not as a con- 

 stitutional but as a local disease, brought on by external causes 

 alone, yet he does not maintain that internal remedies ought 

 7iever to be used — " for it happens, every nov» and then, that 

 the inflammation of the diseased limb is so prodigiously high, that 

 the constitution is found to sympathize with the diseased parts, 

 and generally fever and derangement of the system are the con- 

 sequences. But the chief reason why this complaint is frequently 

 found .-jo difficult of cure, is owing to the circumstance of consi- 

 dering 



