Insalivation. 19 



The practice is an attempt to set aside nature, 

 and might be excused if none of the above ap- 

 pliances are present, or their capabilities in part 

 destroyed. We are so accustomed to treat the 

 horse by analogy, thus convicting him in the ex- 

 ercise of irregular practices, errors of body and 

 mind in common with ourselves, that we natur- 

 ally prescribed a mode of treatment based upon 

 conditions supposed to exist. 



Even a moderate acquaintance with the or- 

 ganized fabric of man and the higher animals 

 leads to a different conclusion. It proves the 

 practice unscientific, unsystematic, foreign, and 

 unnatural. 



I shall have more to offer upon the question 

 of boiled food when a description of other organs 

 has been given. 



After the food has undergone the necessary 

 processes of mastication and insalivation, and, as 

 it passes backwards in the act of swallowing or 

 deglutition, it becomes coated with a thick mucous 

 or viscous secretion, thrown out from glands on 

 the inner surface of the pharynx and gullet. It 

 accumulates as the mass descends, and forms a 

 thick greasy kind of coating, the proceeding 

 having for its object mainly the avoidance of 

 aggregation and stoppage in the gullet, a condi- 

 tion which under aggravated states constitutes 

 choking.* 



* It not uncommonly happens after hard work and long fasts 

 the horse, returning weary and hungry, ravenously swallows his 



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