REMEDIES FOIi SPAVIN. 103 



dilated, respiration hurried. At nine o'clock all his symptoms 

 had increased. His flanks were now beating at the rate of 66 per 

 minute, his pulse was imperceptible at the jaw% and at the heart 

 beating too feebly and flutteringly to be distinctly counted. After- 

 wards, he broke out, over his whole body, into a profuse sweat. 

 His extremities had a deathlike feel; his eyes were staring, wild, 

 and delirious-looking, the pupils unaffected even by the light of a 

 candle. At twelve o'clock he died. Thus, in seventeen hours from 

 his first manifestation of constitutional irritation was this wretched 

 horse a dead carcass. The post'mortem appearances — such, at 

 least, as could be viewed as the result of so short an illness — 

 consisted in morbid aspects of the air-passages, pleura, and lungs. 

 The lining membrane of the trachea and bronchial tubes had 

 turned black from inflammation, appearing as though mortification 

 had actually taken, or was on the eve of taking, place. There was 

 also some effusion into the substance of the lungs, though these 

 organs were in a tuberculous condition from former disease. 



The above case is instructive to us in a double point of view. 

 First, it teaches us caution in blistering — and a fortiori in firing 

 — horses, and especially warns us against doing so in the four 

 limhs simultaneously ; and, secondly, it shews us that, in horses 

 known or suspected to have any disease of chest, firing and blis- 

 tering are doubly hazardous operations. Firing or blistering a 

 circumscribed surface, like the seat of spavin, it is true, is of no 

 great moment ; it is when we come to fire — and deeply fire — the 

 legs from fetlocks to knees or hocks, that evil consequences are to 

 be dreaded in irritable constitutioned horses, or such as are unpre- 

 pared to endure so great an amount of pain and irritation. 



The Ancientness of Firing is notorious. Sollevsell tells 

 us, Arabians, Turks, and Italians practised it, to strengthen their 

 horses' limbs. Gibson likewise informs us that the practice " was 

 first borrowed from the Arabians," and that " the Arabians fired 

 their horses to strengthen their limhs*.'' 



Vegetius has a very interesting chapter " OF THE MANNER OF 



* See vol. i, edit. 2, of his " New Treatise on the Diseases of Horses," 

 p. 165. 



