ROARING. 195 



the very crack horse of the hunt; yet he must be ridden with judgment, and spared 

 a little when going up-hill. There is a village in the West Riding of Yorkshire, 

 through which a band of smugglers used frequently to pass in the dead of night; 

 the horse of the leader, and the best horse of the troop, and on which his owner 

 would bid defiance to all pursuit, was so rank a roarer, that he could be heard at a 

 considerable distance. The clattering of all the rest scarcely made so much noise as 

 the roaring of the captain's horse. When this became a little too bad, and he did 

 not fear immediate pursuit, the smuggler used to halt the troop at some convenient 

 hayrick on the roadside, and, having sutfered the animal to distend his stomach with 

 this dry food, as he was always ready enough to do, he would remount and gallop 

 on, and, for a while, the roaring was scarcely heard. It is somewhat difficult to ac- 

 count for this. Perhaps the loaded stomach now pressing against the diaphragm, 

 that muscle had harder work to displace this viscus in the act of enlarging the chest 

 and producing an act of inspiration, and accomplished it more slowly, and therefore, 

 the air passing more slowly by, the roaring was diminished. W'e do not dare to cal 

 culate what must have been the increased labour of the diaphragm in moving the load 

 ed stomach, nor how much sooner the horse must have been exhausted. This did not 

 enter into the owner's reckoning, and probably the application of whip and spur would 

 deprive him of the means of forming a proper calculation of it. 



Eclipse was a " high-blower." He drew his breath hard, and with apparent difh 

 culty. The upper air-passages, perhaps those of the head, did not correspond with 

 his unusually capacious chest ; yet he was never beaten. It is said that he never met 

 with an antagonist fairly to put him to the top of his speed, and that the actual effect 

 of this disproportion in the two extremities of the respiratory apparatus was not 

 thoroughly tested. Mares comparatively seldom become roarers. It appears to be 

 difficult, if not impossible, to assign any satisfactory reason for this ; but the fact is 

 too notorious among horsemen, to admit of doubt. 



Roaring proceeds from obstruction in some portion of the respiratory canal, and 

 oftenest in the larynx, for there is least room to spare — that cartilaginous box being 

 occupied by the mechanism of the voice : next in frequency it is in the trachea, but, 

 in fact, obstruction anywhere will produce it. Mr. Blaine, quoting from a French 

 journalist, says, that a piece of riband lodged within one of the nasal fossae produced 

 roaring, and that even the displacement of a molar tooth has been the supposed cause 

 of it. Polypi in the nostrils have been accompanied by it. Mr. Sewell found, as an 

 evident cause of roaring, an exostosis between the two first ribs, and pressing upon 

 the trachea ; and Mr. Percivall goes farther, and says that his father repeatedly blis- 

 tered and fired a horse for bad roaring, and even performed the operation of trache- 

 otomy, and at length the roaring being so loud when the horse was led out of the 

 stable, that it was painful to hear it — the poor animal was destroyed. No thickening 

 of the membrane was found, no disease of the larynx or tri'-hea; but the lungs were 

 hepatized throughout the greater part of their substau" ■. 'nd many of the smaller 

 divisions of the bronchi were so compressed, that they were hardly pervious. 



Bands of Coagulated Lymph. — A frequent cause of roaring is bands of coagulated 

 lymph, morbidly viscid and tenacio\is, adhering firmly on one side, and by some act 

 of coughing brought into contact with and adhering to the other side, and becoming 

 gradually organized. At other times there have been rings of coagulated lymph 

 adhering to the lining of the trachea, but not organized. In either case they form a 

 mechanical obstruction, and will account for the roaring noise produced by the air 

 rushing violently through the diminished calibre, in hurried respiration. Thickening 

 of the membrane is a more frequent cause of roaring than the transverse bands of 

 coagulated lymph. In many morbid specimens it is double or treble its natural thick- 

 ness, and covered with manifold ulcerations. This is particularly annoying in the 

 upper part of the windpipe, where the passages, in their natural state, are narrow. 

 Thus it is that roaring is the occasional consequence of strangles and catarrh, and 

 other affections of the superior passages. 



There is scarcely a horse of five or six years old who has not a portion of the thy- 

 roid cartilage ossified. In some cases the greater part of the cartilages are becoming 

 bony, or sufficiently so to weaken or destroy their elastic power, and consequently to 

 render it impossible for them to be freely and fully acted upon by the delicate muscles 

 of the larynx. 



Chronic cough occasionally terminates in roaring. Some have imagined that the 



