PHYSICKING AND BLISTERING. 25 



looked forward to by the owner with an inane kind 

 of idea that the horses will receive benefit from their 

 ' rest ; ' as, indeed, they really ought to do, if they 

 were sanely dealt with during that time. The stable- 

 man looks forward to the same period with ferocious 

 satisfaction, as then he will have an opportunity of 

 giving swing to his cruelties. Beforehand he is re- 

 joicing in projects of 'physicking' {i.e. purging) and 

 blistering, and then ' conditioning,' his hapless and 

 helpless horses, and counting on the empire he has 

 over his master — and he is seldom wrong on that 

 head — for carte blanche, Mayhew says ' the pre- 

 judices of ignorance are subjects for pity: the sloth- 

 fulness of the better educated merits reprobation.' 

 ' No slave proprietor possesses the power with which 

 the groom is invested.' In Brazil the slave -owner 

 is not allowed by law to flog his slaves himself; 

 if they are judged to merit flogging they have to be 

 sent to an olBficial specially appointed in each district 

 for that purpose, which ofiicial is, of course, free 

 from anger and vindictiveness, and only lays on the 

 regular strokes, which the owner would be likely to 

 exceed both in force and number. 



Aloes, as being the most violent and irritating of 

 purges, is the favourite one with the groom. It 

 frequently remains inside the horse a couple of days 

 before it ' sets ; ' it often thus causes inflammation or 

 irritation of the kidneys, and terribly weakens him. 

 Its operation has hardly ceased when the man is 

 applying blisters to the horse's legs ; and the most 

 powerful of ' patents ' and ' vesicants ' are his greatest 



