166 HOW TO PHYSIC A HORSE. 



more usual maladies so as to give them immediate relief, 

 and to enable them to resume their labors for our own 

 benefit in a short period. The truth is the very reverse of 

 this. The more ordinary diseases and affections of the 

 horse are very similar to those with which we are affected 

 ourselves; their treatment is always analogous, often 

 almost exactly identical ; the processes by which relief is 

 to be obtained are the same, and the medicines do not ma- 

 terially differ from those suitable to the human race. It 

 is not too much to say that any intelligent man, gifted with 

 good reasoning powers and not deficient in observation, 

 who knows how to keep his own bodily health in a good 

 state, and to deal with his own ordinary ailments, can, 

 within twelve months, qualify himself to treat a horse in 

 all the cases that are likely to befal him, under ordinary 

 circumstances, as well as any body else, and fifty times 

 better than the stable-keepers, who will sneer at his efforts 

 until they perceive that they are successful, and then will 

 suddenly discover that the means he took are precisely 

 those which themselves recommended. The things of 

 great importance which he has to learn, in order to guard 

 against danger, are, how much depletion the system of a 

 horse can endure without danger, and what extent of pur- 

 gation his bowels can resist undamaged. And to these 

 questions it may be answered, generally, that the horse 

 can bear much more depletion and less purgation than is 

 generally imagined, especially of the drastic drugs usually 

 exhibited. We are very decided opponents of purgatives 

 in general, and have been gratified by observing that the 

 recent cause of veterinary practice, both in France and 

 Euglrmd, is tending to the entire abandonment of the old 

 system ; according to which every horse, whether anything 

 ailed him or not, was put through two annual courses of 

 purgation, each of three doses, in the Spring and Fall, be- 



