230 THE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. 



" Teething in children is now and then a season attended with 

 restlessness and pain, and was one, before surgeons were in the 

 habit of using the gum lancet, of anxiety and danger ; but it is 

 not so with horses ; they never have any feverish irritation 

 created in the system, though they may have some tenderness 

 of the gums and palate, and though some few, in consequence 

 of this tenderness, cud their food, or refuse to eat any but what 

 is soft and unirritating. In such a case, if any thing requires to 

 be done, we ought to lance the gums, not the palate ; but I do not 

 remember ever to have had to do this but once ; and this hap- 

 pened in the case of a horse, then in his fifth year, which had fed 

 so sparingly for the last fortnight, and so rapidly declined in 

 condition in consequence of it, that his owner, a veterinary sur- 

 geon, was under no slight apprehensions about his life. He had 

 himself repeatedly examined the horse's mouth, without having 

 discovered any defect or disease; but another veterinary sur- 

 geon, to whom he had shown the animal, was of opinion that the 

 averseness or inability manifested in masticating food, and the 

 consequent cudding of most of that taken in, arose from a pre- 

 ternatural bluntness of the faces of the grinders : these teeth, 

 therefore, were filed, but no benefit resulted. It was after this 

 that I saw the horse, and must confess that I was just as much 

 at a loss, in my first examination, to offer any thing satisfactory 

 on the case as many others who were then present ; for his teeth 

 and mouth appeared to us all to be perfect and healthy. As I 

 was ruminating, however, after my inspection, on the apparently 

 extraordinary nature of the case, it struck me that I had not 

 seen the tusks. I immediately betook myself to a reexamina- 

 tion, and then discovered two little tumors, red and hard, in the 

 situations of the posterior tusks, which, when pressed, appeared 

 to give the animal insufferable pain. I instantly took a pocket 

 knife, and made crucial incisions through these prominences 

 down to the teeth, from which time the horse recovered his ap- 

 petite, and was restored." 



Tumefaction of the mouth, arising from whatever cause it 

 may, indicates cooling and astringent washes : a weak solution 

 of alum will probably answer every purpose, with which the 

 mouth may be sponged two or three times daily; an infusion of 

 witch-hazel or bay berry bark will answer the same purpose. 



