10 IMPOKTANCE OF VENTILATING STABLES. 



ral days without food or watei*, yet the consequent result is nothing, 

 when compared to that occasioned by breathing atmosphere highly 

 charged with emanations arising from his own body, excrements, and 

 decomposing bedding, 



A horse is said to consume in the lungs, in the course of twenty- 

 four hours, ninety-seven ounces of carbon, furnished by venous blood; 

 in order to perform this feat, he requires one hundred and ninety 

 cubic feet of oxygen. Now suppose there are ten horses occupying 

 the stable: they require in the same time nineteen hundred cubic 

 feet of oxygen, and consume nine hundred and seventy ounces of 

 carbon. They are supposed also to give out from the lungs a vol- 

 ume of carbonic acid gas, equal to that of the oxygen inspired ; and 

 supposing the atmosphere to be saturated with only five per centum 

 of the former, it is a non-supporter of life. 



Hence a horse shut up in an unventilated stable, must sooner or 

 later become the subject of disease; the evil may be postponed, but 

 the day of reckoning is sure and certain. 



Diseases, such as horse-ail, influenza, catarrh, strangles and glan- 

 ders, often originate and prevail to an alarming extent in the unven- 

 tilated stable and pest spot, while in other locations, favorable to the 

 free and full play of vital operations, the favored ones seem to enjoy 

 a remarkable immunity from the prevailing disease, or epizootic. 



Stablemen and husbandmen are often led to remark, that when 

 they keep but few animals, disease and death, except in cases of 

 accident or old age, are quite rare, but so soon as they crowded the 

 same, sickness and death were the consequences. 



In view of supporting this theory, I may be permitted to remark 

 that ship and jail fevers maybe manufactured ad libitum, at any 

 time when a large number of persons are congregated together in a 

 given space ; no provision having been made for the admission of 

 pure air. The unfortunate prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta 

 are an example, and the mortality occurring on board our emigrant 

 ships furnishes another illustration. 



A number ^of horses were once shipped from England to Spain, 

 and on the passage, a violent gale arising, it became necessary to 

 fasten down the hatchway; the consequence was, that most of them 

 ultimately died of either glanders or farcy. 



' I contend, therefore, that the active or morbid germ of disease 

 enters the living citadel through the i)ulmonary tissue, in an insidi- 

 ous manner, and therefore much oftener than the generality of men 

 would be likely to realize. Therefore it is a matter of vital impor- 

 tance that attention be paid to the ventilation of our stables. 



If proper sanitary regulations were established, and fully carried 

 out in all our stables, glanders and other infectious diseases would 

 be exceedingly rare; they are so, among horses free from the con- 

 trol of man, \vhose stalls are broad as from ocean to ocean, their 

 height ranging from earth to regions above ; the space pervaded by 

 a pure atmosj.here, concocted by the Great Chemist, pure as the 

 pearly di'ops, and refreshing as the morning zephyr. In such loca- 

 tions death has no terrors nor disease any %ictims. 



Therefore I entreat husbandmen to ventilate their stables, and 

 thus prevent unnecessary disease. 



