THE HORSE AND ITS DISEASES. 45 



Upon entering the major part (particularly if the door 

 has been a few minutes closed, and is opened for your 

 admission) the olfactory and optic nerves are instantly 

 assailed with the volatile effluvia of dung and urine, 

 equal to the exhalation from a stock bottle of hartshorn ; 

 here you find from ten to twelve, or twenty horses, 

 standing as hot, and every crevice of the stable as closely 

 stopped, as if the very external air was infectious, and 

 its admission must inevitably propogate a contagion. 

 Thus surrounded with the vapours constantly arising 

 from an accumulation of the most powerful volatile salts, 

 stand these poor animals, a kind of patient sacrifice to 

 ignorance and indiscretion ; and that the measure of 

 misery may be rendered perfect by every additional 

 contribution of folly, each horse is loaded with a profu- 

 sion of body clothes, but perhaps more to gratify the 

 ostentation, or display the opulence of the owner, than 

 any intentional utility to the horse. In this state horses 

 are found, upon critical examination, to be in an almost 

 perpetual lanquid perspii^ation, so debilitated, depressed, 

 and inactive, for want of pure air and regular exercise, 

 that they appear dull, heavy and inattentive, as if 

 conscious of their imprisonment and bodily persecution. 



The eftects of this mode of treatment soon become 

 perceptible to the judicious eye of observation ; the 

 carcass is seen unnaturally full and overloaded, for want 

 of those gradual evacuations, promoted by gentle motion, 

 the legs swell, becoming stiff and tumefied, till nature, 

 in her utmost efforts for extravasation, terminates in 

 either cracks, itch, grease, or some one of the many 

 disorders arising from an impurity, viscidity, or acrimony 

 in the blood. 



The hoofs, by being almost invariably fixed to the 

 constant heat of the accumulating dung before described, 

 acquire a degree of contraction indicating hoof-bound 

 lameness. The eyes frequently give proof of habitual 

 weakness, in a watery discharge from the continual 

 irritation of the volatile effluvia, the dilatation and 



