HEREDITARY ROARERS. 85 



hoTsos that are returned upon the hands of the sellers as roarers, that never 

 were known to either groom or stable-boy for roarers, before the day of action 

 or trial. Hence, too, let us charitably suppose, the contradictory evidence 

 often given, and the flat, downright cross-swearing that usually takes place 

 on such occasions. For the horse having been partially made up for the pur- 

 pose of sale, i. e. nursed, patched up, and to all appearance " right in all his 

 part;?," the fact of his ^oing in pain comes out by way of his skin at first, and 

 the new f)urchaser being generally desirous of trying all he can do, the 

 ruin is effected, by pushing him too much, of driving the wind inside the 

 membrane, as before described. 



Hereditary Roarers. Early in the present century, a question arose 

 among breeders, whether the gift or the curse of roaring descended from 

 parents to their i)rogeny. The decision was looked for with unusual anxiety 

 among the breeders of farm-horses in Norfolk and Suffolk, where a famous 

 well-built horse in every other respect was much sought after, even subse- 

 quently to his being denounced a roarer prepense. Would his stock take 

 after him ? was a problem very desirable to be set at rest, when Mr. Wilson, 

 of Bildestone, late Sir T. C. Bunbury's, propounded the question to Mr. 

 Cline, an eminent surgeon and anatomist in London. In reply, Mr. Cline 

 said, " The disorder in a horse which constituted a roarer, was caused by a 

 membranous projection in a part of the wind-pipe, and was a consequence of 

 that part having been inflamed from a cold,* and injudiciously treated. A 

 roarer was not therefore a diseased horse, for his lungs and every other part 

 might be perfectly sound ; but when a horse was in strong action, his breath- 

 ing became proportionably quickened, and the air, in passing rapidly through 

 the wind pipe was in some degree interrupted in its course, and thus the 

 roaring noise was produced. The existence of this in a stallion could not be 

 of any consequence. It could not be propagated any more than a broken 

 bone, or any other accident."t 



Unfortunately, however, for this opinion, and not exactly in accordance 

 with my own, several of that horse's get became roarers, but we are left to 

 guess whether hereditarily or acquired. An account of the horse in question 

 appeared in the Annals of Sportitig for 1823 ; but the colouring given by an 

 evident partisan of the stallion- master induces one to lament the absence of 

 that candour, from which alone useful truths are to be drawn ; for, we are de- 

 terred from indulging in pathological investigation where the grounds of in- 

 quiry are so im])alpably sandy as were those adduced upon the occasion. 



CHRONIC COUGH 



Is already defined to be the remains of an ill-cured cold, which may or may 

 not have been a cough originally. It bears close analogy to simple broken 

 wind that is seated in the wind-pipe or its branches, of which it may be con- 

 sidered a continuation, or the natural consequence of neglect, with more in- 

 veteracy. How this effect would so accrue was described at page 80 ; and 

 the analogy is still further corroborated by the fact, that the treatment for 

 cough of long continuance is precisely that which is found serviceable for 

 broken wind, the situation of the two disorders making the only difference in 

 cither respect. Again, the symptoms of both may, by long and careful treat- 

 ment, be so reduced as to seem cured, for a longer or shorter period, and both 

 will retuin in the shape of roaring, upon the animal being put to sudden hard 



• Not always go, Mr. Cline. 



' Our liunian anatoi n\Si is very nearly right as to an accident not being descendable ; but set* 

 in.' 'hilt roaring did descend to the firsi generation, wp must infer that this was "anaccidenf o' 

 livi'.;, " «vid iiot^a rnmracted one which might possibly go no farther, 

 o * 



