34 The Management and Treatment of the Horse, 



men, and enables them to ride their hobby-horses and air 

 them at almost every dinner-table, by a never-failing 

 discourse about their fools of grooms, who have let their 

 horses get the influenza, or have thrown their horses down 

 and broken their knees. The groom always throws the 

 horse down, the horse always falls down with the master. 

 A gentleman once went to the late Mr. Field, veterinary 

 surgeoD, of Oxford-street, and told him his groom had 

 thrown his horse down, and he had discharged him. Mr. 

 Field asked, " Did your man throw it down ? " and was 

 answered, " Yes, decidedly ; " to which Mr Field replied, 

 " Then when you have done with your man have the 

 kindness to send him to me ; I will find him employment; 

 he will be very valuable to me, as I often want a horse 

 thrown down, and have to employ five or six men to do 

 it. As your man can throw a horse by himself, if I give 

 him good wages, it will be a saving to me. I have no 

 doubt, Captain, that if the horse had come down with 

 you, you would have found a reason to account for it." 

 The veterinary surgeon prescribes medicine for his 

 patient, but he is not sure that the medicine is given at 

 proper times, or even given at all. The chances are if 

 the horse is at all awkward he never gets it at all, and 

 another great danger is that the reasoning power of the 

 groom who knows nothing about the effects of drugs will 

 lead him to reason that if ten drops will do any good, 

 forty drops must do four times as much, so down go 

 four doses at once, and when the veterinary surgeon calls 

 next day he either finds the horse dead or the symptoms 

 greatly aggravated. Although, as a class, the groom is 

 considered ignorant and illiterate, yet there are many 



