THE DISEASES OF CATTLE. 259 



HORN-AIL. 



Persons who are in the habit of prescribing for sick brutes, 

 and have never made themselves acquainted with the sympa- 

 thetic relations existing in the animal economy, to which I have 

 referred, are liable to commit errors in diagnosing disease, and 

 when questioned regarding the seat of the same, their opinion 

 generally is, that the suffering animal has either the horn-ail 

 or tail-ail. The idea, in almost all cases, is so supremely ab- 

 surd, that, if any thing other than a living animal were the 

 subject of the barbarities, which according to mistaken notions 

 of cure are sure to follow, I should feel disposed to burlesque 

 the whole procedure regarding both horn-ail and its treatment. 



In my opinion, horn-ail, in ninety-nine cases out of one hun- 

 dred, exists only in the imagination of those persons who allow 

 error to overcome their better judgment, or else they have not 

 given the subject a passing thought ; therefore, they are incom- 

 petent to even guess at the true nature of the malady, with any 

 chances of correctness. No allusion, that I am aware of, has 

 ever been made by the authors of standard works or text 

 books on veterinary science, to horn-ail, and if educated vet- 

 erinary surgeons were as numerous here as in England or 

 France, and they had the same means to reach the ears and 

 the understandings of our husbandmen, the latter would soon 

 be convinced of the absurdity which is here described, and 

 consequently be induced to protect their animals from that 

 species of cruel quackery, or ignorance, which would refer all 

 their aches and diseases to horns or tails, and which sanctions 

 the boring of the former, and curtailing or docking the latter. 



The pathological conditions on which the absurd theory of 

 horn-ail seems to be founded, are heat or coldness of the horns. 

 These are the principal, and, in fact, only symptoms which the 

 unlearned expounders of a popular malady have given us; but 

 every one ought to be aware that variations in the temperature 

 of a part so inferiorly organized as the horns are, is no crite- 

 rion as regards the nature of the disease which occasions in 

 this vicinity merely an increase or decrease of temperature. 



