416 MANGE. 



hour's walking exercise should be given, an additional rug thrown 

 over him — such green feed- as can be procured should be used in 

 moderate quantities, and the chill should be taken from the 

 water. 



Should the eruption continue or assume a more violent charac- 

 ter, bleeding and aloes must be had recourse to, but neither 

 should be carried to any extreme. The physic havnig set, the al- 

 teratives should again be had recourse to, and attention should 

 be paid to the comfort and diet of the horse. 



If the eruption, after several of these alternative appearan jes 

 and disappearances, should remain, and the cuticle and the hair 

 begin extensively to peel off, a worse affection is to be feared, for 

 surfeit is too apt to precede, or degenerate into, mange. This dis- 

 order, therefore, must next be considered. 



MANGE 



Is a pimpled or vesicular eruption. After a while the vesicles 

 break, or the cuticle and the hair fall off, and there is, as in ob- 

 stinate surfeit, a bare spot covered with scurf — some fluid oozing 

 from the skin beneath, and this changing to a scab, which like- 

 • wise soon peels off, and leaves a wider spot. This process is at- 

 tended by considerable itching and tenderness, and thickening of 

 the skin, which soon becomes more or less folded, or puckered. 

 The mange generally first appears on the neck at the root of" tht; 

 mane, and its existence may be susnected even before the blotches 

 appear, and when there is only considerable itchiness of the part, 

 by the ease with which the short hair at the root of the mane 

 is plucked out. From the neck it spreads upward to the head, 

 or downward to the withers and back, and occasionally extends 

 over the whole carcass of the horse. 



One cause of it, although an unfrequent one, has been stated 

 to be neglected or inveterate surfeit. Several instances are on 

 record in which poverty of condition, and general neglect of 

 cleanliness, preceded or produced the most violent mange. A 

 remark of Mr. Blaine is very important: — "Among the truly 

 healthy, so far as my experience goes, it never arises spontane- 

 ously, but it does readily form a spontaneous origin among the 

 unhealthy." The most common cause is contagion. Amidst the 

 whole list of diseases to which the horse is exposed, there is not 

 one more highly contagious than mange. If it once gets into a 

 stable, it spreads through it, for the slightest contact seems suffi- 

 cient for the communication of this noisome complaint. 



If the same brush and currycomb is used on all the horses, the 

 propagation of mange is assured ; and horses feeding in the same 

 pasture with a mangy one rarely escape, from the propensity they 



