202 DISEASES OF THE HORSE. 



object by the mouth, which, in some cases is preferable, and 

 indeed the only method practicable. 



If the object cannot be removed by this method, we must then 

 have recourse to the operation of oesophagotomy. 



The horse's head being elevated, a careful incision is made 

 through the skin and the coats of the oesophagus, sufficiently 

 large to permit the removal of the obstructing body. The skin 

 should afterwards be united by stitches, and the Avound kept 

 clean. No food should be allowed for some hours afterwards, 

 and it should then be given in a soft state. — Ed.] 



Horses sometimes, when feeding on very dry oats mixed with 

 bran, will have their throats so irritated as to cough ; in doing 

 which a small portion of the food, during the violent inspiration 

 that is made, may get into the larynx and stick in the rima or 

 chink of the glottis, and cause the most dreadful irritation, and 

 in a short time suffocation, unless the small portion of food — 

 perhaps a single oat, or one particle of bran which occasions 

 it, is removed. When this happens, an opening is to be made 

 in the windpipe, and a surgeon's probang passed up through the 

 chink and quickly withdrawn. After the operation, one stitch 

 should be put in the skin, and nothing more done. 



CHAP. XL. 



ACUTE AND CHRONIC RHEUMATISM. 



Acute Rheumatism (^A Chill). 



[This disease is by no means unfrequent. It appears to consist 

 principally of an inflammation of the muscles of the shoulder, or 

 of the loins and hind quarters (the former most frequently), and 

 sometimes comj)licated with severe inflammation of the chest 

 and its contents. Sometimes the joints are principally affected ; 

 and I have met with cases in which the disease has gone from 

 one joint to another, almost throughout the body. In a late 

 case that came under my notice, severe lameness affected each 

 leg, one after the other, until the animal could not stand ; 

 pleurisy supei'vened, and the animal died after six weeks' illness. 

 I found, as I expected, adhesions of the pleura; water in the 

 heart-bag ; considerable disease of the muscles, tendons, and 

 joints ; besides which the liver was thickened and diseased, and 

 an abscess formed in the lungs. — Ed.] 



The manner in which this disease sometimes appears to be 

 produced is the cause of its having been named a chill ; for it 

 often happens, when a horse has been violently exercised, that 

 he is suffered to stand in a current of air to cool, or left there 



