120 AMERICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK. 



essential service to the author in determining its correct pa • 

 thology. As before intimated, however, the modes of treat- 

 ment then in practice were equally barbarous with those ap- 

 plied to big head and fistula, and scarcely more effective than 

 they. The term " blind staggers " was suggestive, and prop- 

 erly applied; for it indicates two effects of the disease, and 

 points to its true pathology. 



We found that a very general opinion prevailed among the 

 people of the affected districts that staggers was, in some 

 way, connected with the horse's eating the corn grown upon 

 land that had just been cleared. Its ravages were the greatest 

 about the time of gathering such corn, and at those seasons 

 when it was fed in the greatest quantity. These* circum- 

 stances induced us to examine it, to ascertain, if possible, 

 whether any connection really existed between the eating of 

 such corn and the developments of the disease. We found 

 that corn grown upon new land is very apt to be badly eaten 

 by a species of greenish-yellow worm, which leaves upon it 

 a dust, or excrempnt, of a very poisonous nature. Corn 

 grown u*pon old ground is often very considerably injured 

 from the same cause, but to a much less extent. As an evi- 

 dence of the poisonous qualities of this worm-dust, if a plas- 

 ter, made by mixing it with vinegar, be placed upon the back 

 of the hand, it will raise a blister in a short time. 



To us it seems perfectly clear that the stomach has nothing 

 to do with the disease, except sympathetically. We shall be 

 compelled to look to some other source for its origin. This 

 we believe to be the effects of the worm-dust upon the corn, 

 but operating in an entirely different way from that which 

 the people of the South were accustomed to imagine. 



There is a little orifice in the nostril of the horse, situated 

 upon the back part of it, and about an inch from the outlet. 

 In size it varies somewhat in different horses, but is usually 

 about an eighth of an inch in diameter. This little opening — 

 with several smaller ones, which may be found higher up 

 the nose — is the outlet of the lacrymal duct (lacrymal mean- 

 ing tears), which is the tube, or passage, that drains the 



