TIIE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. 383 



action in the system, and, consequently, is in its origin peculiar 

 to the horse species. 



" II. That this exclusive generative faculty is coincident with 

 the exclusive uses to which horses are put ; the horse being that 

 vital machine which is employed for moving great weights or 

 overcoming great resistance. 



" III. Oxen, in some localities, are likewise so employed ; but 

 then they do their work always at a tardy pace, so slow, indeed, 

 that it does not interfere with rumination ; while horses, on the 

 contrary, almost always work with more rapidity, and oftentimes 

 are compelled to carry great weights at the same rapid pace. 

 And, moreover, the horse, nervous and excitable by nature, freely 

 gives himself up to such rapid movements, expending thereby so 

 much more strength in any given time than the bullock in his 

 slow movement. 



" IV. Excess of such kind of labor appears to be one of the 

 causes of the horse's deterioration and wearing out. And so 

 glanders, viewed as the result of excessive action in the living 

 organ, is nothing more, in a great number of cases, than the 

 effect of exhaustion induced by labor to which the powers of the 

 animal were inadequate. 



" V. But how does this excessive work produce exhaustion 

 and premature wearing out of the machine ? Modern science 

 furnishes us with an answer to this question of a more precise 

 and satisfactory description than formerly could have been given. 



" VI. Animal life is sustained through veritable combustion. 

 Pulmonary exhalation proves this. The air expired from the lungs 

 contains the products of combustion — carbonic acid and water. 

 The combustible matter entering into the constitution of the 

 organism is therein incessantly separated and eliminated through 

 the agency of the affinity of the oxygen absorbed upon the pul- 

 monary surface. It is the same with the incombustible matter, 

 azote ; that being separated from its various combinations when- 

 ever the oxygen exerted its affinity, and becoming eliminated 

 through the urinary passages. 



" The effect of the air, then, introduced into the system through 

 the respiratory passages, is incessantly to destroy organic com- 

 binations, and eliminate their products in a state of combustion, 



