DICTIONARY OF THE VETERINARY ART. 233 



and watery, the muzzle dry, and rumination has ceased : then 

 the blood, for want of room in the nutritive tissues, is forced 

 upon the lungs, liver, spleen, brain, or other glandular tissues, 

 and men have named the disease congestive fever. The 

 author advises the reader not to feel alarmed about the fever, 

 but set to work and relieve the oppression by the same means 

 as above. Disease of the bowels, garget of the head and 

 udder, will require fomentation and stimulants to the parts. 



Filly. A name given to a mare until she is two or three 

 years old. 



Film. Opacity of the cornea. (See Eye, part first.) 



Filtration. Straining liquids through unsized paper; 

 also through sand or porous stone. 



Firing. A severe operation often performed on horses, for 

 spavins, curbs, ringbones, &c. Such barbarity should never 

 be practised : it is a disgrace to this age of improvement. 

 When discoveries are leaping on discoveries, and medical 

 reform has germinated, shall we not permit the poor dumb 

 brute to share the benefits of our investigations ? Every man 

 who loves a horse, or wishes well to the cause of humanity, 

 will say that a more safe and effectual system of veterinary 

 practice is necessary to rescue from the torture of the firing 

 iron one of the noblest and most valuable quadrupeds in the 

 world. 



" The rage of firing is very generally, and much too 

 frequently adopted, and no doubt, upon most occasions, hur- 

 ried on by the pecuniary propensity and dictation of the 

 interested operator, anxious to display his dexterity, or, as 

 Scrub says, ' his newest flourish ' in the operation ; and 

 when performed, and the horse is turned out to grass, if taken 

 up sound, I shall ever attribute much more of the cure to 

 that grand specific, rest, than to the effects of his fire." (See 

 Taplin's Farriery, p. 83.) Hence the firing iron, like all 

 other destructive agents, excites the system to rally her pow- 

 ers and resist the encroachments of disease ; yet the process is 

 like taking a citadel by storm ; the breaches that are made by 

 the weapons of warfare (such are the firing iron, scalpel, lan- 

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