PHTHISIS. 123 



possession. She ate her food to the last, and lay down very- 

 much to ease her painful foot/^ — Veterinarian, vol. v, 

 p. 264. 



The detection of tubercles, while they are small and 

 hard and unirritating, is what even percussion and aus- 

 cultation fail in accomplishing : their existence can only be 

 made out by these tests, and then but imperfectly, when 

 they are numerous and large, and occupy a considerable 

 portion of lung. The diminished murmur of that part, and 

 its want of resonance on percussion, may induce us to 

 suspect what is the case. Tubercles are most commonly 

 found in the anterior and superior portions of the lungs. 

 Suppuration and tubercular excavation will be announced 

 by the cavernous rale prevailing. The absence of the fatty 

 or nutmeg liver in phthisical horses, though so commonly seen 

 in men, tends to the confirmation of the opinion of surgeons, 

 that in the latter it is owing to habits of spirit-drinking. 



Treatment. — Pulmonary consumption, once established, 

 is a disease without remedy: at least, we know of nothing 

 that has the power to rectify or remove those morbid 

 changes of structure on which its confirmed existence de- 

 pends. In colts already predisposed from their make to 

 consumption, or in such as have contracted the predisposition 

 from the situations they have inhabited or the vicissitudes 

 they have been exposed to, and who, perhaps, have the seeds 

 of consumption already sown in their lungs, we unques- 

 tionably possess some power of prevention, by attending to 

 them in a manner and with a care which their peculiar case 

 may appear to demand. We may go still farther than this, 

 and say, that when inflammation or febrile action has to 

 do with the setting-in of the disease, we have the power of 

 suspension, if not of arrest, in our hands. As I have had 

 occasion to observe before, inflammation ought never to be 

 suffered to lurk or creep about the chest of a horse: it is a 

 part so apt to take fire and burn with a smothered heat, 

 that it requires, in every case to which suspicion of the sort 

 attaches, the utmost and narrowest vigilance on the part of 

 the practitioner. Let him who has a young horse out of 



