TREATMENT 245 



It may not, perhaps, be uninteresting to detail 

 the way in which I treated my hunters during the 

 summer of 1825, taken from minutes made in each 

 succeeding week. They were six in number, and 

 their treatment is severally described. 



From the regular course of alterative medicine 

 which my horses go through in the course of the 

 hunting season, it often happens that at the conclusion 

 of it there is no immediate call for physic, and such 

 was the case with them last spring. They ceased 

 from their labours on the 20th of April, and (with the 

 exception of one that was fired) continued their usual 

 food, with very gentle exercise, till the seventh of 

 May, when they had their shoes taken off and some 

 grass given them in the day time, but racked up at 

 night with hay ; and so treated till the nineteenth of 

 the same month, when they were put entirely upon 

 hay again. On the eleventh of June they were soiled 

 again in the day time, till the twentieth of that month, 

 when they were prepared for physic, which they had 

 on the twenty-second. From that time four of them 

 never tasted grass again ; but the other two had a 

 few vetches (say about an armful) mixed with their 

 hay every other day till the sixth of July, when they 

 were all shod, and began gentle exercise. From the 

 seventh of May, to the sixth of July — a period of 

 eight weeks and four days — these horses were without 

 shoes, their feet having been closely pared down ; 

 and they were thus treated. Nos. i|and 2 were in a 

 building sixteen yards long by six wide, well littered 

 down, and with an outlet into a small green-yard. 



