78 PERIODIC OPHTHALMIA. 



value upon, or about whom many fond expectations had been raised 

 which now are all to be blasted in the bud. Such advice as this 

 is enough to make a man exclaim in the doctor's face, 



" Throw physic to the dogs, — I'll none of it !" 



Name. — Among the various appellations given to this disease, 

 we have preferred the one which denotes its peculiarly character- 

 istic or most remarkable property — its intermittent or rather peri- 

 odical character ; for it is not by fits or paroxysms, after the man- 

 ner of an ague, that it returns ; but by relapses, as though it were 

 a fresh disease, after having been absent for more or less considerable 

 time. On this account, I prefer the epithet "periodic;" the same 

 which the French veterinarians have adopted. Professor Coleman 

 called it " sjiecific ophthalmia;" signifying that it was a disease 

 differing from common inflammation of the eye, or that it was one 

 sui generis :■ but the same epithet, " specific," being applicable to 

 glanders, to farcy, to grease, and some other disorders, seems on 

 that account less characteristic than the one I have chosen. 

 The earliest authors on farriery called the disease " moon blind- 

 ness," an appellation modernized by some succeeding writers into 

 " lunatic blindness ;" they entertaining a supposition that, " as 

 the moon changed, the horse gradually recovered his sight." Old 

 Gervaise Markham, in his " MASTERPIECE," has the following 

 passage : — " Now they be called moon eyes" — shewing the appella- 

 tion did not originate even with him — •" because, if the farrier 

 do observe them, he shall perceive that at some times of the moon 

 the horse will see very prettily, and at some times of the moon 

 he will see nothing at all. Now the signs thereof are, when the 

 horse's e3'es are at the best, they will look rather yellowish and 

 dimme ; and when they are at the worst, they will look red, fiery, 

 and angry." Mr. Fearon named the disorder " gouty ophthal- 

 mia," from the resemblance Professor Coleman, in his lectures, 

 was wont to draw between its periodical returns and the paroxysms 

 of gout. Mr. Sewell proposes to call it ''odontalgic ophthalmia," 

 from an opinion which — as we shall see hereafter — he has imbibed 

 from some continental veterinarians, who have assumed that its 



