PECULIAR TO HORSES. 35 



cool it may be spread on the region of tlie stifle by means of a knife 

 or spatula ; this is to be covered with a thin layer of wool or cotton 

 batting, 



* In days of yore it was ousfcomary to apply the stifle-shoe, but I 

 think the practice is injudicious, highly injurious, and at the present 

 period is scarcely, if over, advocated by men who do their own 

 thinking and practice in accordance with the principles of common 

 sense. 



BLINDNESS AMONG HORSES — ITS NATURE AND 

 SYMPTOMS. 



A great proportion of these cases of blindness are the result of 

 over-fe'eding ^ our horses are notoriously fat, I do not mean that 

 those now blind are in this condition, but that they were so ere 

 blindness set in ; now, their digestive organs are the seat of func- 

 tional disorder ; consequently they are, in this condition, more apt 

 to lose rather than gain flesh. 



It is quite a common practice among dealers to force their horses 

 into a fat and sleek condition ere they offer them for sale. Tlie ani- 

 mal undergoes the stuffing process ; his stomach is converted into a 

 grist mill ; the food (Indian corn) is rich in oxygen or fat, contains 

 more of the fat-making principle than any other article of equine 

 diet; and imder the condition of rest, in warm city stables, adipose 

 or fatty m:itter accumulates very rapidly, and is stored up in the 

 cellular tissues, and as the fatty matter preponderates, the muscular 

 structures degenerate. 



Butchers are well acquainted with the fact that very fat carcasses 

 contain but little meat or muscle, and even the heart of a fat animal 

 often contains a coasiderable quantitj'' of fat globules, insinuated 

 between its muscular fibres. This condition impairs the heart's 

 function, and constitutes a disease known as fatty degeneration. 

 This is the effect which food, rich in sugar or oxygen, has on the 

 animal economy. Now, in this land of plenty, and in this region, 

 which is tlie great national bread-basket, there is danger of over- 

 feeding horses. In view, therefore, of preventing plethora and 

 blindness, horse owners must dip a lighter hand into the corn bin. 



Blindness occurs as follows; "When blindness occurs as a func- 

 tional disorder, it is often the result of a disturbed sympathetic rela- 

 tion between the brain and the stomach ; and an overworked or an 

 over-distended stomach may not occasion any local pain, but often 

 operates with that kind of influence on the brain which gives rise to 

 symptoms, not stomachic, but cerebral. The brain once aflected, 

 then commences morbid action in the eye, or eyes, as the case may 

 be, through the operation or medium of the optic nerve, which orig- 

 inates in the base of the brain. 



It appears to me that many of the horses daily parading our 

 cities, blind in one or both eyes, must labor nndcr some peculiar 

 predisposition to derangement and diseases of the organs of vision, 

 and whenever the ordinary exciting causes (errors in diet) are ope- 

 rative for any length of time, they develop a morbid condition, 



