CHRONIC COUGH. 345 



obstructions to free respiration may eventually be produc- 

 tive of roaring : the custom of tightly reining in our car- 

 riage-horses, especially such as run in pairs or double har- 

 ness, there is reason to think produces it ; the practice of 

 using tight throat-lashes or neck-straps may likewise have 

 induced it. In furtherance of which last opinion it may 

 be recollected, that horsemen have a very general suppo- 

 sition that cribbiting ends in roaring, in thick wind, or in 

 broken wind : may not the tight collar, strapped around the 

 throat, here tend to the former of these afiections? The 

 custom of ' coughing ' horses, and so frequently as it is 

 practised in fairs, may be readily supposed as a cause. A 

 horse passes from fair to fair, having his unfortunate throat 

 brutally pinched thirty or forty times each day. Is it to be 

 wondered at if inflammation takes place, and adhesive de- 

 posit follow ? 



The treatment must be regulated by circumstances. When 

 it is acute, and depends upon the diseased state of neigh- 

 bouring parts, the inflammation of those parts must be 

 relieved. When it can be discovered to be the consequence 

 of recent inflammation of the laryngeal or tracheal carti- 

 lages, a physic ball may be given, and the seat of the disease 

 blistered, while, from day to day, some sedative medicine is 

 administered. Every case of roaring, however, excepting 

 the very acute, is undertaken with fear and trembling, and 

 the cure depends quite as much upon chance as upon skill. 



CHRONIC COUGH. 



Coughing is a spasmodic effort of the diaphragm, inter- 

 costal, and abdominal muscles, producing a forcible expira- 

 tion of the air from the chest, with such violence as is 

 calculated to remove any extraneous body that may intercept 

 the free passage of the air. Whenever it accompanies a 

 general affection of the constitution, it is regarded as simply 

 symptomatic, and the original disease is attended to for its 

 removal. Thus catarrh is accompanied by a cough, but 

 we attend principally to the general affection, as the best 

 means of subduing it. A chronic cough is often symptomatic 

 of some affection of the air-passages ; it is also an attendant 

 upon the state called broken wind : it likewise accompanies 

 glanders ; and appears when worms are in the stomach and 



