REACTION AND CHILL. 23 



increased functional activity. If, however, the application of 

 cold is too violent or too prolonged for the reaction to take 

 place, chill, with its well-known bad results, will probably 

 ensue. The greater the previous functional activity, the 

 quicker will be the reaction, and the less will be the danger of 

 chill taking place. Hence, when a horse is hot from recent 

 exercise, he will have less chance of catching a chill from, for 

 example, drinking cold water, or being made to swim in a 

 river, than after he has cooled down. Although I have never 

 known or heard of any harm having been caused to a horse 

 by drinking cold water when he was in a heated state from 

 exercise, the fact remains that men have dropped dead from 

 nervous shock in similar circumstances. 



When a horse " breaks out " into sweat after he has become 

 cool, he is far more liable to chill, than when he returns to his 

 stable hot from work ; because, in the former case, his skin 

 is colder than in the latter. " Breaking out " is caused chiefly 

 by influences which like hot stables and too much cloth- 

 ing stimulate the sweat glands more than they increase 

 the temperature of the surface of the body. Removal of 

 the cause, exercise and vigorous friction to the coat, are 

 evidently the appropriate remedies. 



Disease set up by chill is a result of a change in the 

 quantity of the local blood supply being carried beyond a 

 healthy limit, as often happens when the surface of the body 

 is rendered more or less bloodless by the continued action of 

 a cold current of air, with consequent congestion of one or 

 more of the internal organs. A cold draught playing on a 

 horse in a stable is far more likely to give him a chill, than 

 exposure to an equally cold and equally strong current of 

 air in a field, where the effect of the wind would be much 

 more general, and where he would have an opportunity of 

 equalizing the distribution of blood in his body by exercise. 



When the blood vessels have been deprived of their normal 



