82 TKEATMENT OF DISEASES 



pas,''"' requires a few applications of some astringent lotion, made of 

 alum, gum catechu, raspberry leaves, white oak bark, or diluted 

 tincture of muriate of iron. 



LIGHT IN STABLES. 



Stables should be so constructed, by the insertion of windows in 

 various parts of the building, that they should be " light as day.'^'* 

 A '■'■dark " stable is only a suitable black hole — prison house for such 

 a vicious specimen of the equine race as the notorious " Cruiser.'''* 

 It is also the very worst location for any kind of animal. Sir 

 A. Nylie (who was long at the head of the medical staff in the Rus- 

 sian army) states that the cases of disease on the dark side of an 

 extensive barrack, at St. Petersburg, have been uniformly, for many 

 years, in the proportion of three to one to those on the side exposed 

 to a strong and uniform light, Humboldt has also remarked that, 

 among bipeds, the residents of South America, who wear very little 

 clothing (thus allowing the cutaneous, as well as the orbital surfaces, 

 to receive a free ray of light), enjoyed immunity from various dis- 

 eases Avhich prevailed extensively among the inhabitants of the 

 dark rooms and underground locations ; and so excellent an author- 

 ity as Linnaeus contends that the constant exposure to solar light is 

 one of the causes which render a summer journey through high 

 northern latitudes so peculiarly healthful and invigorating. Dr. Ed- 

 wards has also remarked that persons who live in caves or cellars, 

 or in very dark or narrow streets, are apt to produce deformed chil- 

 dren ; and that men who work in mines are liable to disease and 

 deformity. 



Light, therefore, is a condition of vital activity ; and in view only 

 of preserving the sight of a horse, it is absolutely necessary that 

 while he be the habitant of the stable, his optics shall have free access 

 to the sun's rays. 



If a horse was in the same condition as a polype, with no organ 

 of vision, which shuns light, a dark stable might prove to be his 

 earthly paradise ; but as the horse has special organs of vision, evi- 

 dently susceptible to the influence of light, and the integrity of his 

 organism, or part of the same, depending entirely on the admission 

 of light, it is absolutely necessary that stables should be constructed 

 accordingly. 



GLANDERS. 



This is one of the most terrible diseases to which the horse is sub- 

 iect. In fact, it is also terrible to man, for it is communicable from 

 horse to man, and many cases are on record going to show that 

 whole families have been destroyed by absorbing the glandered 

 virus. The disease has been styled " the phthisis, or consumption 

 of the equine race," from the fact that the lungs of the glandered 

 Bubject are the seat of tubercles, and many other features of the 

 disease resemble those attending human consumption. Glanders is, 

 however, unlike consumption. 



