ADVERTISEMENT. v 



from the new practice. This I have done from frequent 

 experience of their good effects in certain cases; at the same 

 time, pointing out the common abuse of such articles. Con- 

 sidering the present fashionable retrenchment of the veteri- 

 nary materia medica, and that nothing farther is now held 

 necessary, than to ring the changes upon Barbadoes aloes, 

 radix ipecac, tartar emetic, and vitriol in substance, it will 

 appear that I have been very redundant : but reflecting on 

 constitutional idiosyncrasy, and that from various occult 

 causes, or in different circumstances, a medicine shall have 

 anomalous effects in the same disease, I have thought pro- 

 per to note most of those simples or compositions, which 

 have been found, by experience, to operate efficaciously on 

 the body of the horse. If I have retained some forms of 

 rather an injudicious or equivocal description, I believe, 

 there are none liable to any very particular exceptions, into 

 whatever hands they may fall. 



I omitted to state, in its proper place (Vol. 2. p. 379) 

 that in the low fever of horses, attended with sudden great 

 debility, antimonial wine, with a moderate quantity of lau- 

 danum, given at intervals, in acidulated and sweetened herb 

 drinks, has often succeeded, when the common doses of 

 nitre and cremor tartar have had a nauseating and debili- 

 tating effect. 



My acknowledgements to Doctor Downing have been 

 sufficiently liberal. The Doctor's book, I have, at last 

 discovered, to be a tolerably accurate copy of Topham on 

 the Diseases of Cattle. The composition of this last is the 

 strangest medley of good sense, and ineffable nonsense, that 

 I have ever perused ; and it afforded me as hearty a laugh, 

 as I have enjoyed from reading Rabelais or Cervantes. 

 The manuscript, I should conjecture, of some person of the 

 name of Topham, fell into the hands of the school-master, 

 exciseman, or clerk of the parish. It is Pipes's second edi- 

 tion of his master's love letter, 



Aftei 



