BROKEN WIND. 349 



Continent it long occupied, in later times, the research of 

 many eminent veterinarians, but with little satisfactory- 

 issue. It has been attributed to external and internal 

 causes ; to a defect, and to a superabundance, of vital 

 energy ; to altered structure of the heart, of the lungs, of 

 the diaphragm, the stomach, the liver, &c. It is lesion 

 with some, nervous with others, and simple distention with 

 a third. Among our own writers the discrepancy is equally 

 great : Gibson attributed it to an enlargement of the pulmo- 

 nary mass generally ; Dr. Lower to a rupture of the phrenic 

 nerve ; but in later times it has been mostly attributed by 

 our writers to structural change. Yet to proceed somewhat 

 methodically, we will cursorily inquire into its more proba- 

 ble causes. 



The cause of broken wind is hereditary or constitutional 

 predisposition. A certain form of body is unquestionably 

 favourable to its production, and it is from this circum- 

 stance that it proves hereditary. The narrow confined 

 chest, and the pendant belly, which mark low-bred horses 

 and gross feeders, predispose towards the affection. It 

 must be the subjecting horses to a long-continued un- 

 healthy course of feeding on dry food, as chaff, bran, bar- 

 ley meal, &c. &c. that brings it on ; as also working in 

 mills, where much dust is necessarily inhaled. It is seldom 

 the immediate consequence of pneumonia ; but frequently 

 it results from those states of disordered respiration which 

 succeed to it, as thick wind, chronic cough, &c. We are 

 much in the dark about its origin : we see that it gradually 

 steals on a horse, occupying months, and even years, with 

 a slight occasional cough, which ripening into a state of 

 impeded respiration, at last ends in broken wind. We see 

 it also follow one hard gallop ; and we can leave a horse 

 well one day, and find him broken-winded the next. With 

 these facts in our every-day experience, can we readily 

 name any universal cause ? 



A post-mortem examination, in most of the subjects, has 

 brought forward an emphysematous state of lungs, and we 

 need not to have looked further for the cause ; but, on the 

 contrary, it is not by any means uncommon to meet with 

 broken-winded horses whose lungs after death are neither 

 emphysematous or otherwise structurally deranged ; and 



