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-56 AMERICAN FARMEE'S HORSE BOOK 



stupor. This continues for an uncertain period, and then he 

 begins to struggle again; but he is, probably, unable to rise. 

 He pants, he foams ; at length, completely exhausted, he dies. 



*' There are but two diseases with which phrenitis can be 

 confounded, and they are cholic and rabies. In cholic, the 

 horse rises and falls; he rolls about and kicks at his belly; 

 but his struggles are tame compared with those of the phre- 

 nitic horse. There is no involuntary spasm of any of the 

 limbs ; the animal is perfectl}^ sensible, and, looking piteously 

 at his flanks, seems designedly to indicate the seat of pain. 

 The beautiful yet fearfully-excited countenance of the one, 

 and the piteous, anxious gaze of the other, are sufficiently 

 distinct ; and, if it can be got at, the rapid, bounding pulse 

 of the one, and that of the other scarcely losing its natural 

 character in the early stage, can not be mistaken. 



"In rabies, when it does assume the ferocious form, there 

 is even more violence than in phrenitit^; but there is method, 

 and treachery, too, in that violence. There is the desire of 

 mischief for its own sake, and there is frequently the artful 

 stratagem to allure the victim within the reach of destruc- 

 tion. There is not a motion of which the rabid horse is not 

 conscious, nor a person whom he does not recognize ; but he 

 labors under one all-absorbing feeling — the intense longing 

 to devastate and destroy." 



PALSY. 



A case of primary palsy we have not been called upon to 

 treat in a practice of twenty years. The few cases of palsy 

 which have come under our own observation have invariably 

 been produced by other diseases, and always shared their 

 fate. If the horse recovered from the other attack, the palsy 

 passed away, but never otherwise. 



Palsy is occasioned by the suspension or the cessation of 

 nervous action. In the horse, it is generally considered to 

 be the result of some injury of the spinal cord, in consequence 

 of which the hips and thighs, and other parts of the hind ex- 

 tremities,, become partially paralyzed. 



