366 AMERICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK 



deplete the system and weaken the vital energies. We do 

 not care to dispute the correctness of their practice in this 

 regard, but when the same theory Is advanced in respect to 

 the horse, we know that it is not applicable. A few pseudo- 

 veterinarians have advocated it, we are well aware, and they 

 have poured forth unnumbered vials of wrath, and subjected 

 the people's English to no one knows what torture, in their 

 denunciations of the " vile practice " of bleeding, as they are 

 pleased to characterize it. One *' modern horse doctor," iu 

 particular, claiming the benefits of an experience of nine 

 years' practice in the vicinity of Boston, informs us that 

 "the disease can, if curable, be cured without abstracting 

 blood. In every disease where bleeding has been resorted 

 to, complete recovery has been protracted, and the animal 

 manifested the debility by swollen legs and other unmistak- 

 able evidences of derangement." His other argument is, 

 "Because the letting of blood impoverishes that which re- 

 mains, and leads to other equally dangerous diseases as the 

 one it was intended to cure." 



Now, all this is simply not so in relation to the horse ; and, 

 in passing to its examination, we can not help remarking 

 how little support this writer's theory is likely to derive from 

 his own experiences as recorded by himself in the same 

 volume. We believe that he has not told us of a single 

 cure that he has effected. He went to see several bad cases, 

 it is true, but these all died; and as for the others, one can 

 hardly help being led to believe that they died also, or else 

 that, if they got well, they would have done so just as soon 

 without his assistance. His work either entirely ignores 

 or contains gross inaccuracies concerning some of the most 

 dreadful maladies to which the horse is subject. While some 

 diseases, and they among the worst known, he barely men- 

 tions, for others he has prescribed as man^^ as twenty-two 

 or even twenty-eight different ingredients in compounding 

 a remedy. Some of his preparations it requires fourteen or 

 fifteen days to make ready for use ! 



With our own hands we have bled five hundred horses and 



