00 APOPLEXY. 



closes, and he sleeps again with the food in his mouth. Soon afterwards he is, pet 

 haps, roused once more. The eye opens, but it has an unmeaning glare. The hand 

 is moved before him, but the eye closes not; he is spoken to, but he hears not. The 

 last act of voluntary motion which he will attempt is usually to drink ; but he has 

 htle power over the muscles of deglutition, and the fluid returns through the nostrils. 



He now begins to foam at the mouth. His breathing is laborious and loud. It is 

 performed by the influence of the organic nerves, and those of animal life no longer 

 lend their aid. The pulse is slow and oppressed the jugular vein is distended 

 almost to bursting the muzzle is cold, and the discharge of the faeces involuntary 

 He grinds his teeth twitchings steal over his face and attack his limbs they some- 

 times proceed to convulsions, and dreadful ones too, in which the horse beats himself 

 about in a terrible manner ; but there is rarely disposition to do mischief. In the 

 greater number of cases these convulsions last not long. All the powers of life are 

 oppressed, and death speedily closes the scene. 



On examination after death, the whole venous system is usually found in a state 

 of congestion, and the vessels of the brain are peculiarly turgid with black blood. 

 Occasionally, however, there is no inflammation of the brain or its membranes ; but 

 either the stomach contains a more than usual quantity of food, or the larger intes- 

 tines are loaded with foul matter. 



This disease is found more frequently in the stable of the postmaster and the farmer 

 than anywhere else. Thirty years ago it was the very pest of these stables, and the 

 loss sustained by some persons was enormous ; but, as veterinary science progressed, 

 the nature and the causes of the disease were better understood, and there is not now 

 one case of staggers where twenty used to occur 



Apoplexy is a determination of blood to the head, and the cause is the over-condi- 

 tion of the animal and too great fulness of blood. Notions of proper condition in the 

 horse now prevail very different from those by which our forefathers were guided. 

 It no longer consists in the round, sleek carcase, fat enough for the butcher, but in 

 fulness and hardness of the muscular fibre, and a comparative paucity of cellular and 

 adipose matter in that which will add to the power of nature, and not oppress and 

 weigh her down. 



The system of exercise is better understood than it used formerly to be. It is pro- 

 portioned to the quantity and quality of the food, and more particularly the division 

 of labour is more rational. The stage-horse no longer runs his sixteen or eighteen, 

 or even two-and-twenty miles, and then, exhausted, is turned into the stable for the 

 next twenty hours. The food is no longer eaten voraciously ; the comparatively little 

 stomach of the animal is no longer distended, before nature has been able sufficiently 

 to recruit herself to carry on the digestive process ; the vessels of the stomach are no 

 longer oppressed, and the flow of blood through them arrested, and, consequently 

 more blood directed to other parts, and to the brain among the rest. 



The farmer used to send his horses out early in the morning, and keep them at 

 plough for six or eight hours, and then they were brought home and suffered to over- 

 gorge themselves, and many of them were attacked by staggers and died. If the evil 

 did not proceed quite to this extent, the farmer's horse was notoriously subject to fits 

 }f heaviness and sleepiness he had half-attacks of staggers. From this frequent 

 oppression of the brain this pressure on the optic nerves as w^ell as other parts, 

 another consequence ensued, unsuspected at the time, but far too prevalent the horse 

 became blind. The farmer was notorious for having more blind horses in his stable 

 rhan any other person, except, perhaps, the postmaster. 



The system of horse management is now essentially changed. Shorter stages, a 

 livision of the labour of the day, and a sufficient interval for rest, and for feeding, 

 lave, comparatively speaking, banished sleepy staggers from the stables of the post- 

 naster. The division of the morning and afternoon labour of the farmer's horse^ 

 vith the introduction of that simple but invaluable contrivance, the nose-bag, have 

 -endered this disease comparatively rare in the establishment of the agriculturist. Tc 

 *he late Professor Coleman we are indebted for some of these important improve 

 ments. 



Old horses are more subject to stiggers than young ones, for the stomach has b^ 



