HEALTH. 



" Health we regard as the standard (or sound) condition 

 of the body. But it is not easy, nor is it necessary, to 

 express in what that condition consists. It is sufficient to 

 know it implies freedom from pain and sickness — from all 

 those changes in the structure of the body which endanger 

 life, or impede the easy and effective exercise of the vital 

 functions. It does not signify any fixed immutable condi- 

 tion ; for it varies in different persons according to age, sex, 

 and original constitution, and in the same person from day 

 to day. Again, health does not necessarily imply perfect 

 integrity ; indeed, it is not incompatible with great and 

 paramount alterations, and even loss of parts that are not 

 vital, as of an arm or leg.^^' 



The natural habits and peculiarities of the horse become 

 objects of study hardly less essential in practice than are 

 the structure and functions of the various parts of its body ; 

 it being by a close and consistent approximation to them 

 that we are best enabled to keep the animal healthy and 

 vigorous in its state of domestication. Although health and 

 disease are conditions equally familiar to us in their true or 

 genuine characters, yet to append correct definitions to them 

 has perplexed our ablest medical writers : the difficulty lying* 

 in drawing a line in the midst of those forms and stages 

 through which one state shades into or vanishes into the other 

 — those faint and evanescent links by which the two ends 

 of the chain are united. Our great moral philosopher, 

 Locke, used to say, that if we would but rightly estimate 

 good and evil, we should find they lie much in comparison : 

 in like manner, we may briefly sum up the general nature 

 and characters of health and disease, and, with Locke, pro- 

 nounce, ^' they lie much in comparison. ^^ 



The Signs of Health, at least the outward signs, are 

 too notorious to need much description. We may say, with 

 Gibson, " When a horse eats a moderate allowance of hay 



' Dr. Watsou's Lectures, 'Med. Gaz.,' 1840. 



