292 APPENDIX. 



uted to the boring process. An author whose name has 

 escaped our memory, recommends " cow doctors to carry a 

 gimlet in their pocket." We say to every man, Lead your- 

 selves not into temptation : if you put a gimlet in your pock- 

 et, you would be likely to slip it into the cow's horn. Some 

 men have a kind of instinctive impulse to bore the cow's 

 horn ; of course we allude to those who are unacquainted with 

 the nature of the malady. It is no more a disease of the 

 horns than it is of interrupted secretion, absorption, &c, 

 finally, the whole mucous membrane. Horn-ail — as it is 

 improperly termed, for it is only a symptom of derangement 

 — may result or accompany common catarrh, also that of an 

 epidemic form ; the horns will also feel unnatural if there is 

 a determination of blood to the head : this might easily be 

 equalized by stimulating the external surface and extremities : 

 a general temperature would be the result. The horns will 

 generally be found hot whenever the vascular structure in 

 the immediate vicinity is distended beyond its physiological 

 state, on account of the ingesta and egesta — what passes in 

 and out — not being duly proportioned : the blood-vessels then 

 become expanded and hot, and febrile symptoms follow ; and 

 this loss of equilibrium may result from suffering the animal 

 to wallow in filth, or be exposed in damp situations, thereby 

 constricting the surface, and driving the circulation to the in- 

 ternal organs. 



If the insensible perspiration is checked, then it is deter- 

 mined to serous and mucous rnernhjanes, and results in hoove, 

 or catarrh, abscesses, dropsy, congestions, hemorrhage, diarrhoea, 

 &c. Thus, in some cases, the dry and contracted state of the 

 surface determines the fluids that would naturally go there to 

 the internal canal, as the kidneys, producing red water, or to the 

 bowels, producing diarrhoea; but first confines morbific mat- 

 ter in the system, and from it abscesses are formed j some- 

 times in the udder, called garget ; at other times in the 

 frontal sinuses, called horn-ail. In most cases, abscesses 

 will determine towards the external surface, as on the udder, 

 and be discharged ; or to the mucous, as in those of the 



