50 DISEASES OF THE AIR-PASSAGES. 



rein in harness is nothing like so generally in use, or applied 

 with the severity it used to be in former days ; all which leave 

 much less ground for apprehension on this score. Unless 

 it be in the case of a colt whose head is so unmeetly set on, 

 or whose neck is so straight, so short and so thick, that, 

 without a force and constraint likely to be productive of 

 injury, there is no possibility of getting the animaVs head 

 into its " proper place/^ 



Mr. W. H. Goodwin, late veterinary surgeon to the Queen, 

 informed me that, during his professional residence at St. 

 Petersburgh, his attention was especially drawn to several 

 horses who, by himself and others, had previously been declared 

 to be roarers, in consequence of their having got rid of their 

 complaints in the menage. These horses, it would appear, 

 roared in consequence of distortion produced by former 

 unnatural flexure of the windpipe; and this distortion, the 

 Russian system of equitation — which consisted in the ele- 

 vation of the head and projection of the nose — was admirably 

 adapted to counteract, and, in process of time, remove. 



Wasting of the muscles of the larynx. — Some years 

 have now elapsed since it was first discovered that the 

 laryuges of roarers occasionally presented the singular 

 phenomenon of the muscles on one side being wasted away 

 or absorbed, while, on the other, they appeared to exhibit 

 a normal volume and redness, and strength of fibre. Since 

 the discovery was made, every one almost has met with cases 

 of the kind ; though no person seems as yet to have given 

 an explanation of this new piece of pathology. My view 

 of the case is this : — 



Horses in general, as every man in the habit of riding and 

 driving knows, have what is called '' a hard and a soft side^^ 

 to their mouths : and there is no situation in which they are 

 more likely to contract this, should they not possess it before, 

 than in harness ; for the animal is no sooner borne or reined 

 up, than, in order to give himself as much ease as this con- 

 strained position admits of, he inclines his head to one side, 

 and in that posture carries it, all the while bearing with the 

 hard side of his mouth against the bridoon, and thereon 



