STOMACH STAGGERS. 169 



or both ; and the animal dies, either in the birth, or a few days after it, 

 A much more common cause of pressure on the brain arises from fracture, 

 with depression of the bone; when an accident occurs either from a fall or 

 a blow, and it is followed by an immediate state of stupor or insensibiHty, 

 this will be found to be the case, and a careful examination of the cranium 

 will at once detect it ; or very nearly as rapid a state of stupor may 

 supervene when, from the accident, a blood-vessel is ruptured, and effusion 

 of blood on the surface of the brain follows. 



STAGGERS. 



Under this head three varieties are familiarly known : viz.. Stomach 

 Staggers, Sleepy Staggers, and Mad Staggers. They all more or less 

 resemble each other, differing only in their degree of violence, and the 

 causes in operation to produce them. 



STOMACH STAGGERS, 

 As the name indicates, is generally produced by some derangement of 

 the digestive organs, consequent upon some mismanagement either in the 

 feeding of the animal or in the nature of the food upon which he has been 

 fed. When the horse has been kept for some hours without eating, and has 

 been worked hard, and become thoroughly hungry, he feeds ravenously on 

 every kind of food he can get at, swallowing it faster than his small stomach 

 can digest it, and no water being given to soften aud hasten its passage, 

 the stomach becomes crammed, aud having been previously exhausted by 

 long fasting, is unable to contract upon its contents. The food soon begins 

 to ferment and to swell, causing great distension ; the brain sympathises 

 with this overloaded organ, and staggers are produced. We can easily 

 imagine this, when we remember the sad head-aches occasionally arising 

 from an overfilled and disordered stomach. 



This disease is found more frequently in the stable of the postmaster and 

 the farmer than anywhere else. Thirty years ago it was the very pest of 

 these stables, and the loss sustained by some persons was enormous ; but, 

 as veterinary science progressed, the nature and the causes of the disease 

 were better understood, and there is not now one case of staggers where 

 twenty used to occur. 



The system of horse management is now essentially changed. Shorter 

 stages, a division of the labour of the day, and a sufficient interval for rest, 

 and for feeding, have, comparatively speaking, banished stomach staggers 

 from the stables of the postmaster. The division of the morning and 

 afternoon labour of the farmer's horse, with the introduction of that 

 simple but invaluable contrivance, the nose-hag, having rendered this dis- 

 ease comparatively rare in the estabHshment of the agTiculturist. To the 

 late Professor Coleman we are indebted for some of these most important 

 improvements. 



Old horses are more subject to staggers than young ones, for the stomach 

 has become weak by the repetition of the abuses just described. It has 

 not power to digest and expel the food, and thus becomes a source of 

 genei'al, and particularly of cerebral, disturbance. 



Horses at grass are occasionally attacked by this disease ; but they are 

 generally poor, hard- worked, half-starved animals, turned on richer pasture 

 than their impaired digestive organs are equal to. Perhaps the weather is 

 hot, and the sympathy of the brain with the undue labour of the stomach 

 is more easily excited, and a determination of blood to the brain more 

 readily effected. 



Mr. Percivall gives a very satisfactory illustration of the production of 

 staggers in this way. He says that ' when his father first entered the 



