THE IMPROVED ART OF FARUIERY. 103 



BROKEN WIND, 



This is a subject that has long employed vetermar}' 

 practitioners most of whom differ as to its origin. 

 Our continental neighbours, as well as ourselves, have 

 arrived at no satisfactory conclusion respecting it. To 

 show the variety of opinions entertained on Broken 

 Wind, we need only to hear what Blaine says on their 

 numberless conjectures. " It has been attributed to 

 external and internal causes ; to a defect, and to a su- 

 perabundance, of vital energy ; to altered structure of 

 the heart, of the lungs, of the diaphragm, the stomach, 

 the Uver, &c. ; it is lesion with some, nervous with 

 others, and simple distention with a third. Gibson 

 attributed it to an enlargement of the pulmonary mass 

 generally : Dr. Lower to a rupture of the phrenic nerve ; 

 and in later times, it has been mostly attributed by our 

 writers to organic lesion." 



Causes. — ^With so many different opinions on the 

 subject, we must doubtless look for a variety of causes 

 assigned, as well as numberless methods of treatment, 

 although none have ever obtained celebrity or emolu- 

 ment by establishing a cure for the Broken Wind. I 

 shall endeavour to give the most popular and approved 

 accounts of each. Broken Wind may arise from the 

 formation of the body ; especially, as we may very 

 often discover it in the inferior breed of horses, where 

 the. nariow and confined chest will not admit of a well 

 regulated action of the lungs, and further, from the dis- 

 tended bellies usually seen in gross feeders, and likewise 

 in mares, among which it more frequently occurs than 

 with the horse. Ravenous feeding, from keeping the 

 animal too long without his meals, giving him too much 



