U HOW TO PROCEED UTTH DISSECTION. 



constitute every horseman's first step to horse knowledge, whether he under- 

 lake it as an owner or as a farrier, the latter most especially; of him 1 may 

 justly add, thai he can not be said to exercise his calling honestly as he ought, 

 who sullenly neglects to learn those rudiments of art and practice that teach a 

 knowledge of the animal economy and the functions of the horse in particular. 

 1 do not hesitate to insist upon the examination of the animal's internal parts, 

 as constituting one main item of those rudiments; and I would not avoid giving 

 this operation the proper name of dissection, but that I fear to alarm the gene- 

 ral reader with an apparent difficulty where none exists in reality. Hovv 

 without that previous knowledge, durst he venture to pronounce what parti 

 cular ailment, out of the numerous catalogue that pertain to the horse, his pa 

 lient labours under? How can he ascertain the degree, or quantity and quality 

 of the attack, so as to know when it may be increasing in malignity, or its 

 virulence is expended? Least of all can he succeed in the cure, when so much 

 uncertainty hangs about his means of discriminating between one disorder and 

 another, — to say nothing of the usually attendant ignorance of the mode in 

 which medicines operate upon those internal parts that lie concealed from his 

 view, but upon one or the other of which they are, nevertheless, destined power- 

 fully to act. If it be allowed, that no two horses are ever aflected exactly alike 

 an those disorders that depend upon the secretions, as 1 shall show at the end 

 of this chapter, how is it possible 'hat such neglectful men could ever reduce 

 the symptoms of any disorder, without reducing, at the same moment, th« 

 power or functions of the part upon which their strange and ever-violent mix 

 tares expend their force, and thus entail upon the animal a disposition to ac- 

 quire some other disorder. 



Every man who would make himself proficient in the knowledge of diseases 

 should open his own dead horses, and as many more as he can obtain access 

 to, and attentively examine the state of the stomach, the liver, the lungs, the 

 heart, kidneys, and bladder. If the animal be recently dead, this profitalile 

 inquiry will be far from disagreeable, unless the cause of death has been ol 

 the putrid kind, spoken of in Book II. Chap. 1. as Typhous, but which rarely 

 happens. In the pursuit of this necessary first step to veterinary knowledge, 

 he will proceed in this manner. The horse being on its back, two legs on the 

 Kan)e side are to be elevated by a cord passing round the fetlock of each, and 

 fastened to a nail in the ceiling or elsewhere aloft. Then with a sharp knife, 

 of the common shoemakers' kind, he will draw a straight cut all the way from 

 the first rib or breast bone, at the intersection of O with 21 in the picture, to 

 the sheath, or thereabouts. If the cut be not too deep, the skin will recede a 

 little, and expose the membrane ; cutting through this the intestines will pro- 

 trude, and drive forth a thin expansive membranous sac, apparently unattacli- 

 »h1, being designed for holding the guts, and preventing friction. This soon 

 'jursts, and the blind gut (or ccecum)^ described at section 48, appears. He 

 will slit open this pouch, and examine its contents before he quits the subject, 

 probably ; but his first business is with the stomach, which is depicted in tlie 

 annexed plate, ds situated at the conjunction of IKL with the figures •2(i — 29. 

 Herein will be found the last drench that sent him out of life, or the last food, 

 that gave hopes of a prolonged existence ; and on its surface, vulgarly termed 

 the coats of the stomach (when turned inside out), may be discovered the havoc 

 committed by the farrier's unskilfulness : according to the strength of the poi- 

 sons so administered, will the coats show the dilapidation, or at times a nole 

 will have been perforated, that is the cause of instant death. 



The young operator will keep in mind what is said of those parts at sec- 

 tions 45, 46, &c., if he do not turn to and read them over once more before he 

 takes up the knife. With the same precaution as to re-reading section 52) 

 Vc he will proceed to examine the state and ai»pcarance of tht liver and kiij 



