58 THE FAMILY HORSE. 



stood, the supposed cause would in fact be valued as the most effec- 

 tive cure, and that catarrh and influenzas are more frequent in win- 

 ter than in summer, is due exclusively to the circumstance that sta- 

 bles, as well as houses, are most outrageously stuffy at a time when 

 cold weather furnishes a pretext for keeping doors and windows 

 tightly closed. Intensely cold weather may disinfect the in-door at- 

 mosphere in spite of such i^recaution, as in the Arctic regions, where 

 the frost of the polar nights lowered the temperature of the Esqui- 

 maux hovels below zero, and where consequently pulmonary diseases, 

 according to the unanimous testimony of Arctic travelers, are al- 

 most entirely unknown. But our latitude enjoys neither the advan- 

 tages or disadvantages of that arrangement. Our Northwest States 

 experience polar waves that would make a Greenlander feel quite at 

 home ; but such snaps alternate with days that would give a Cuban 

 refugee no cause of complaint, and these warm spells are the har- 

 vest-times of catarrh seeds. After a week's rain, the sun may glare 

 out in midwinter and make the air feel positively sultry ; but, accord- 

 ing to instructions, the groom of a crowded stable continues to keep 

 the doors carefully closed ; horses, ' off their feed,' for some cause or 

 other, are kept in-doors day and night, and some fine morning the 

 zymotic hot-house proves to have developed its fruit in the form of 

 malignant catarrh. The hot stench of the foul miasma den has at last 

 overcome the disease-resisting powers of creatures whose ancestors 

 roamed the airy highlands of American mountains ; the cells of their 

 lung-tissue have become clogged with the constant influx of atmos- 

 pheric impurities, as river-beds would become choked with the de- 

 posit of an incessant mud-deluge, and under the combined influence 

 of heat and moisture the festering accumulations have developed the 

 germs of morbific organisms. With the aid of pure out-door air, the 

 self -regulating tendency of the animal system would promptly eject 

 such intruders ; but that air is now excluded more carefully, how- 

 ever ; the affected animals are kept in their stables ; the resources of 

 their vitality are still further reduced by bleeding and debilitating 

 cathartics, and under such exquisite combination of favorable con- 

 ditions the development of the disease here assumes the phase of a 

 contagious influenza, or a similar ' unaccountable plague.' " 



Many well built stables have rooms for the coachman or groom 

 in the upper story, with conveniences for warming it. In such 

 places a ventilating tube from the stable may open into the chimney, 

 and the cm-rent of warm air will create sufficient suction to carry off 

 all impure air from below. 



In warm weather ventilation is still more necessaiy if possible 

 than in cold. The windows are taken out and replaced by screens 



