THE IMPROVED ART OF FARRIERY. 45 



selves to a great loss ; whereas, the proper use of the 

 nose-bag, and well regulated hours of feeding, tend 

 alike to their health, comfort, and utility. 



When the delirium and frantic symptoms of Mad 

 Staggers are very violent, and ths horse exhibits signs 

 to do mischief, and knocks his head against his stall, 

 it is the better practice to sling him, which not only 

 prevents him doing injury to himself, but gives the 

 practitioner a better chance of approaching with safety 

 to operate on him. 



Some have supposed that the atmosphere, weakening 

 the organs of digestion at times, has made this disease 

 epidemical. Gibson, who appears to have been th( 

 best writer and practitioner of his day, held the fol- 

 lowing opinion, Vvhich is worthy of attention. He thus 

 states the circumstance : — 



*' Several young horses vvere seized with the stag- 

 gers, attended mth such uricommon symptoms as put 

 the ordinary practitioners quite to a stand. It was 

 sufficiently visible that the disorder lay principally in 

 their heads, by which most of them, more or less, lost 

 the use of their limbs : some were only cramped and 

 convulsed in a moderate degree, and were soon relieved 

 by bleeding and cephalic medicines, wdth proper em- 

 brocations ; in others, this new distemper appeared to 

 have a near affinity to a hemiplegia, or that sort of palsy 

 which in men takes away the use of one side, but not 

 to such a degree as happens in the human body. I 

 had a horse so bad, that when he came to be moved, 

 he was held up on the side affected by several men^ 

 who w^ere forced to support his whole weight. ^Mien 

 he was let loose in the riding-house, he turned round 

 lilce a person in a vertigo and fell down suddenly ; but 

 this rotation did not proceed altogether from the causes 

 which usually produce the vertigo in men, but from 



