358 THERAPEUTIC TREATMENT OF FARCV. 



"drag its slow length along" beyond the period prescribed by 

 reason and conscience for it to last : the owner of the horse gets 

 weary of professional attendance, and the veterinary surgeon ex- 

 periences both a sense of weariness and dissatisfaction at finding 

 the progress towards amendment, if any, of so tardy a nature. 

 The patient is not in that hopeless condition that calls for the 

 knacker ; he is by no means fit, or safe even, to go to work, and 

 he is " eating his head off," and taking or using medicine, the ex- 

 pense of which he may never repay. What is to be done in such 

 a dilemma as this 1 Should the season of the year be favourable, 

 pasture offers a resource likely to prove serviceable, certainly- 

 pleasant, to the animal, and one that the medical attendant will, 

 with satisfaction to himself, if not with benefit to his patient, re- 

 commend. A change of diet, from dried to green and relaxing 

 food, living in the open air, and the constant exposure of the 

 farcinous limb to a lower temperature than that of the stable, 

 together with the walking exercise the animal is from time to time 

 taking upon it, all has a tendency to do good, and on occasions 

 proves of eminent service. In particular salt marshes have been 

 regarded as beneficial, and apparently not without reason. When- 

 ever and wherever the patient may be turned out to grass, he ought 

 to have no companions save any as might happen to have on 

 them the same disease as himself: it would be highly imprudent, 

 nay, full of danger, to suffer him to run with healthy horses. In 

 situations Avhere or seasons when pasture cannot be procured or 

 resorted to, it is desirable to soil the patient in his box : vetches 

 or rye, or, in the winter season, carrots or Swedish turnips, become 

 a desirable change of diet for him. There arrives a period, in cases 

 of this protracted and indolent stage of farcy, when the resources of 

 medicine seem to be exhausted, nothing that is administered doing 

 any good, and this is a period when the disease is judiciously 

 " left," as our common phrase goes, " to nature," to take, uninter- 

 fered with by art, its spontaneous course. 



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