CHAPTER XXIV. 



DISEASES. 



G71. — The horse is a hardy animal. In a state of nature he is 

 little subject to disease, and even bears unnatural food, unnatural 

 confinement, cruel overdriving, poisonous air, and poisonous drugs^ 

 to an extent that no other equally sensitive animal would do. The 

 patient ox would bear more inaction and confinement, and the om- 

 niverous pig would bear more extremes in liis food, Init no other 

 animal in the world would bear the same amount of overdriving 

 that is so commonly and so cruelly inflicted upon the horse. Each 

 of the many abuses to which he is subjected in domestication, has 

 produced some corresponding disorder, until the catalogue of his 

 diseases is almost as long and painful as that of the human 

 family, and the average life of the domesticated horse is less than 

 one half of that of the wild one. 



G72. — If half the attention devoted to remedies were 

 directed to easy and certain prevention it would be an inestimable 

 boon to the equine race. 



Veterinary students have been even slower than our own 

 qualified medical practitioners in giving up Brown's brandy, 

 bleeding, blisters, and balls. Still they have made some progress, 

 so that whilst Youatt told us that the cruelly exhausted horse in the 

 hunting field might be saved if the rider had skill enough to 

 bleed him on the spot, a great orthodox modern authority tells 

 us that " to bleed him is to kill him." 



Mr. George H. Dadd, M.D., and V.S., and the author of by 

 far the best veterinary works we have seen, says, " The more a 

 man knows of physiology the less faith he has in medicine," and 

 " during nine years practice, in the city of Boston, we have never 

 in a single case of this, or any other form of disease, had recourse 



