194 THE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. 



The treatment, in order to be any thing like successful, must be 

 conducted with enlarged views of the animal economy as a 

 whole — we must realize how much one part is dependent on, 

 and contributes to, the support, perpetuity, and identity of func- 

 tion, on another, and that all parts are united by a common bond 

 of sympathetic continuity, as well as cellular structure, and are 

 destined, in certain stages of disease, to suffer in common from a 

 common exciting or predisposing cause. 



We must also take into account, that the debility present, or 

 which may ensue during the progress of tedious or prostrating 

 disease, mu3t be met by prompt agents favorable to health, for 

 debility (functional or general) may with certainty be consid- 

 ered as the principal cause of premature death. With a view, 

 then, of promoting the living integrity, and producing an equilib- 

 rium of function throughout the whole economy, we must, in- 

 stead of prostrating the system by bloodletting and purging, — so 

 strenuously urged by most writers, and, indeed, practitioners — 

 administer tonics, antispasmodics, stimulants, and laxatives ; for 

 there is nothing that we know of so prostrating to the system of 

 man or horse as acute pain. Long-continued pain, such as a 

 tetanic subject is known to suffer, changes the very elements of 

 the blood : so that the fluid on which our very existence depends 

 for — using a homely expression — its bread and butter (car- 

 bon) is deficient, and the patient may die for want of fuel to 

 support pulmonary combustion. There is really no necessity for 

 the abstraction of blood in tetanus. For it has been shown by 

 Dr. Radcliffe (see Half-yearly Abstract of the Medical Sciences, 

 vol. xvi. p. 312, and also No. 17, p. 222, January to June, 1853) 

 and by other eminent surgeons, that convulsive, spasmodic, and 

 tremulous diseases depend on a decided and unequivocal de- 

 ficiency in the duo amount of that stimulus which is supplied to 

 the muscles from the blood, nerves, and other sources, and not 

 upon an increased afflux of such stimulus. Dr. Radcliffe clearly 

 demonstrates, in the papers alluded to, that these, as well as other 

 muscular disorders, depend upon the same want, and are manifest- 

 ed in a state of general or local debility, and not in one of health 

 and vigor. Hence the plan of treatment here recommended, and 

 by which we have saved several valuable horses, is superior to 



