364 AMERICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK • 



is fully understood. Oftener than otherwise, the trouble lies 

 in the former. 



An effort to free the blood from fever, while there is a 

 fountain somewhere in the system pouring out its influences 

 of heat and inflammation, will prove fruitless in the end. 

 All sych treatment must necessarily fail; the fountain must 

 be dried up, or the stream will continue still to flow. We 

 may ameliorate symptoms, but until the cause of disease is 

 discovered and renloved, there can be no permanent cure. 



We have, therefore, no specific treatment for fever, nor 

 any directions, save those which are given in connection 

 with the disease of which the fever is the symptom and de- 

 velopment. In general terms, alteratives are of great benefit 

 as both preventive and. corrective of a diseased condition of 

 the blood. Some of them accomplish wonders in aiding the 

 vital forces to resume their full, free, and healthy action. 

 INText to the "jimson seed" — even better than that in some 

 diseases — we must give the highest excellence among all al- 

 teratives to the sulphur and resin compound, so often pre- 

 scribed in the preceding pages of our work. It acts some- 

 what slowly, but always surely, and can do no harm, no 

 matter in what quantities the horse will eat it. 



But it often occurs that the horse's blood is in such a state, 

 and the whole system of absorbents rendered so inactive, that 

 alteratives can not be thrown into the circulation with suffi- 

 cient rapidity to produce the desired effects; and here fre- 

 quently arises the necessUy for bleeding. Before considering 

 this subject, however, let us inquire what changes disease 

 may work in the blood, and what that state of the blood is 

 in which bleeding becomes proper. 



THICK BLOOD. 



This is a condition of the blood often found in venesec- 

 tion. The blood is so thick that it scarcely runs at all for 

 some time, though the large vein of the neck — the jugular — 

 hsL^ been opened with a broad-shouldered fleam or a large 



