368 AMERICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK. 



extent, so that neither food nor medicine is taken up by the 

 lacteal absorbents in nearly the quantities that they would 

 be if the body was in health. 



It is folly, then, to lay such stress on that flimsy web of 

 argument, the impoverishment of the blood by bleeding. 

 The blood is already impoverished, disorganizing, decaying, 

 and the sooner it can be replaced by what is new and health- 

 ful the better. 



This leads us to another and very important consideration ; 

 namely, the certainty and swiftness with which bleeding re- 

 laxes the system — in numerous cases doing at once what 

 medicines will not do in time to save life. As consequences 

 of this relaxation, the absorbents of the bowels are opened, 

 and the secretions throughout the body are eliminated more 

 nearly as in health. 



In respect to bleeding, it will not do to consider the case 

 of the horse exactly analogous to that of the human being. 

 Although the physical organisms of man and of the horse 

 are so much alike, there exist some marked diversities when 

 we come to the minute applications of hygienic laws. All 

 medicines do not have precisely the same effect upon both 

 of them. Some which act with great severity upon the horse 

 are almost inert upon the human subject ; while others that 

 are poisonous to the latter are mild and gentle, or quite in- 

 operative, when given to the horse. Our liniments are ex- 

 amples of the first. They produce comparatively little effect 

 upon the skin of the person handling them, while they act 

 most powerfully upon that of the horse. Of the second class, 

 the datura stramonii is a remarkable specimen. Although it 

 is a rank poison to man, a gallon of it would not hurt the horse. 

 "We have known him to almost live on it for two months, in 

 that time eating bushels of the leaves and buds. 



Not a few cases of bleeding have we witnessed in our time 

 from the human subject, but have never known such blood 

 to be drawn as we have seen flowing from the jugular vein of 

 the horse — thick, sticky, and almost black. From him we 

 have abstracted, we might almost say, hogsheads of blood, 



