446 HANDY-BOOK OF HUSBANDRY. 



" of horses arise, in the first instance, from bad management, — or, 

 " to speak more correctly, from absence of all management, from 

 " an improper system of feeding, from ill-constructed, unventilated, 

 " filthy stabling, from injudicious driving, and neglect of cleaning. 

 *' When disease has arisen, it is immediately aggravated, and, per- 

 *' haps, rendered ultimately fatal, either by vi^ant of medical aid, or, 

 " what is far more frequent as well as far more prejudicial, igno- 

 " rant, improper, and often violent treatment, either on a wrong 

 " diagnosis of the affection, or on a still more wrong system of 

 "relieving it. Over-medicining and vulgarly quacking slightly 

 " ailing horses is the bane of half the private stables in cities, and 

 " of nearly all the farm stables in the country ; and one or the 

 " other, or both combined, cause the ruin of half the horses which 

 " ' go to the bad ' every year. 



" There is no quack on earth equal to an ignorant, opinionated 

 " groom J and every one, nowadays, holds himself a groom, who is 

 " trusted with the care of a horse, even if he do not know how to 

 " clean him properly, or to feed him so as not to interfere with his 

 " working hours. Every one of these wretched fellows, who has 

 "no more idea of a horse's structure or of his constitution than he 

 "has of the model of a ship or the economy of an empire, is sure 

 " to have a thousand infallible remedies for every possible disease, 

 "the names of which he does not know, nor their causes, origin, 

 "or operation; and which, if he did know their names, he is 

 " entirely incapable of distinguishing one from the other. These 

 " remedies he applies at haphazard, wholly in the dark as to their 

 " effect on the system in general, or on the particular disease, and, 

 " of course, nine times out of ten he applies them wrongfully, and 

 " aggravates fiftyfold the injury he affects to be able to relieve. 



"These are the fellows who are constantly administering purga- 

 "tive balls, diuretic balls, cordial balls on their own hook, without 

 "advice, orders, or possible reason — and such balls, tool some of 

 " them scarcely less fatal than a cannon-ball — who are continually 

 "drugging their horses with niter in their food, under an idea that 

 " it is cooling to the system, and that it makes the coat sleek and 

 " silky, never suspecting that it is a violent diuretic ; that its ope- 



