HIGH BLOWING 19 



disease; (2) whether it is occasional, as in pleurisy, or frequent, as in bron- 

 chitis; (3) whether it is moist, as in catarrh of the air passages, or dry, as 

 in broken wind; (4) whether it is free, as in common cold, or painful and 

 suppressed, as in laryngitis. Cough, it will be seen, is a mere symptom of 

 disease, and not a disease in itself; and although usually associated with 

 disorders of the respiratory apparatus, it is sometimes induced by nervous 

 impulses excited in remote organs. The remedy for coughing is the 

 remedy for the particular ailment out of which it arises, and every case 

 must therefore be dealt with on its merits. The treatment necessary to 

 allay the cough of laryngitis would have no beneficial effect in that result- 

 ing from intestinal irritation, for, while in the former case sedatives would 

 be indicated, in the latter aperients and perhaps a vermifuge would be 

 most promising of success. In the matter of treatment, therefore, the 

 particular medicines and applications to be employed will be governed by 

 the nature of the cause to which the cough is due. 



HIGH BLOWING 



The sound to which this term is applied is produced in the act of 

 breathing while the air is being expelled from the lungs during forced 

 respiration. It is most marked while the horse is doing a brisk canter, 

 and becomes less audible in the gallop. It is always most pronounced at 

 starting, and is recognized as a fluttering or loud vibrating noise. The 

 degree of vibration differs in different animals, and it is distinctly more 

 sonorous in some than in others. 



High blowing is essentially a nasal sound, and although sometimes loud 

 and shrill, it bears no comparison in point of quality with the noise 

 emitted as the result of laryngeal disease in roarers and whistlers. 



It is more especially observed in horses with thin skins, whose false 

 nostrils are loose and capacious, and in animals of excitable temperament. 

 In the writer's experience high blowers are conspicuous for the soundness 

 of their breathing organs and endurance under exertion, and in a large 

 practice in the examination of horses of every description he does not 

 remember to have found roaring to be associated with this peculiar breath- 

 ing sound. Increased nasal resonance or noisy breathing is sometimes the 

 result of that type of conformation in which the face presents a narrow and 

 pinched appearance across the region of the nose. In this condition the 

 sound has the quality of that ordinarily heard in respiration, but much 

 intensified. 



It is readily distinguishable from roaring, and is not to be regarded as 

 a state of unsoundness. 



