116 FARCY. 



charge their function. Hence arises enlargement of the sub- 

 stance of various parts, swellings of the legs, and chest, ami 

 head — sudden, painful, enormous, and distinguished by a heat 

 and tenderness, which do not accompany other enlargements. 



Farcy cannot probably exist without previous glanders, and it 

 is certain that it cannot long and extensively prevail without 

 being accompanied by it. They are, in fact, stages of the same 

 disease. 



Farcy has been confounded with other diseases ; but he must 

 be careless or ignorant who mistook sprain for it. The inflam- 

 mation is too circumscribed and too plainly connected with the 

 joint or tendon. 



It may be readily distinguished from grease or swelled legs. 

 In grease there is usually some crack or scurfiness, a peculiar 

 tenseness and redness and glossiness of the skin, some ichorous 

 discharge, and a singular spasmodic catching up of the leg. 



In farcy the engorgement is even more sudden than that of 

 grease. The horse is well to-day, and to-morrow he is gorged 

 from the fet-lock to the haunch, and although there is not the 

 same redness or glossiness, there is great tenderness, a burning 

 heat in the limb, and much general fever. It is simultaneous 

 inflammation of all the absorbents of the limb. 



Local dropsy of the cellular membrane, and particularly that 

 enlargement beneath the thorax which has the strange appella- 

 tion of ivater-farcy, have none of the characters of real farcy. 

 'It is general debility to a greater or less degree, and not in- 

 flammation of the absorbents. 



Farcy, like glanders, springs from infection and from bad 

 stable management. It is produced by all the causes which 

 ffive rise to slanders, with this difierence, that it is more fre- 

 quently generated, and sometimes strangely prevalent in particu- 

 lar districts. The matter of farcy must come in contact Avith a 

 wound or sore, in order to communicate the disease. 



The treatment of farcy differs with the form that it assumes. 

 As a general rule, and especially when the buttons or buds are 

 beginning to appear, a mild dose of physic should first be ad- 

 ministered. The buds should then be carefully examined, and 

 if any of them have broken, the budding-iron, at a dull red heat, 

 should be applied. If pus should be felt in them, showing that 

 they are disposed to break, they should be penetrated with the iron. 

 These wounds should be daily inspected, and if, when the slough 

 of the cautery comes ofl', they look pale, and foul, and spongy, 

 and discharge a thin matter, they should be frequently washed 

 with a strong lotion of corrosive sublimate, dissolved in rectified 

 spirit. When the wounds begin to look red, and the bottom of 

 them is even and firm, and they discharge a thick white or yel 



