EMPIRICAL TREATMENT. 39 



you with, both as to the quantity and quality of the 

 food, as well as the pace and duration of work, best 

 adapted to the peculiar constitution of your horse. 



Some horses require a great deal of physic to reduce 

 their secretions to a healthy condition ; others require 

 next to none, and would be reduced to patients if 

 physicked to a like extent. Some require to be sweated 

 twice a week, others will carry no muscle if sweated 

 once a month. These considerations will, in a measure, 

 pave the way for a due consideration of this subject ; 

 and I must here state that in handling this subject, 1 

 do not for a moment intend these remarks for trainers 

 or training grooms worthy of the name ; who, if they 

 would take the trouble to do so, could add to their 

 greater experience far greater ability than is in my 

 power to bring to bear on the subject. 



But I have some hopes that those who, having the 

 proper condition of their horses at heart, and occasion- 

 ally try their hands at private training, and leave, in a 

 great measure, their valuable animals to the ignorance 

 and caprice of their ' grooms, who know no more of 

 training than consists in physicking and galloping horses 

 to death,' as I once heard an old and clever trainer re- 

 mark, by which means a highly-bred and gifted horse 

 is frequently brought to the post literally unfit to gal- 

 lop, much less to race, the usual distance of from one 

 mile and a-half to four miles ; either in a puffy, feeble 

 state, or else something like one's idea of a hunted devil ; 

 but, nevertheless, if he has been subjected to the pre- 

 scribed number of nostrums, sweats, and f go-downs of 



