378 THE HORSE. 



are the depressed and anxious countenance, and inquiring gaze, 

 suddenly, however, lighted up, and becoming fierce and menacing 

 from some unknown cause, or at the approach of a stranger. From 

 time to time different parts of the frame, the eyes, the jaws, par- 

 ticular limbs, will be convulsed. The eye will occasionally wander 

 after some imaginary object, and the horse will snap again and 

 again at that which has no real existence. Then will come the 

 irrepressible desire to bite the attendants or the animals within its 

 reach. To this will succeed the demolition of the rack, the manger, 

 and the whole furniture of the stable, accompanied by the peculiar 

 dread of water, which has already been described. Towards the 

 close of the disease there is generally paralysis, usually confined to 

 the loins and the hinder extremities, or involving those organs 

 which derive their nervous influence from this portion of the spinal 

 cord ; hence the distressing tenesmus which is occasionally seen." 

 How paralysis can produce tenesmus is not very clear, but of the 

 very general existence of this symptom there can be no doubt. The 

 dread of water, as well as of draughts of cold air, is also clearly 

 made out to exist in this disease (as in human rabies), and the 

 term hydrophobia will serve to distinguish it better than in the 

 dog, where it is as clearly absent. Whenever, therefore, these 

 symptoms follow upon the bite of a dog, unless the latter is un- 

 questionably in good health, rabies may be suspected, and the bare 

 suspicion ought always to lead to the use of the bullet, which is 

 the safest way of killing a violent horse. There is only one disease 

 (phrenitis^ with which it can be confounded, and in that the 

 absence of all consciousness and, in milder cases, of fear, so that 

 no moral control whatever can be exercised, marks its nature, and 

 clearly distinguishes it from rabies, the victim to which is con- 

 scious to the last, and though savage and violent in the extreme, 

 is aware of the power of man, and to some extent under his 

 influence. 



TETANUS LOCK-JAW. 



TETANUS, one form of which is known as lock-jaw, has its seat 

 apparently in the nervous system, but, like many other diseases of 

 the same class, the traces it leaves behind are extremely uncertain, 

 and are displayed more on the secondary organs, through which it 

 is manifested, than on those which we believe to be at the root of the 

 mischief. Thus the muscles, which have been long kept in a state 

 of spasm, show the marks of this condition in their softened and 

 apparently rotten condition. They in fact have had no interval 

 of rest, during which nutrition could go on, and have lost much 

 of the peculiarity of structure which enables them to contract. 

 The stomach often shows marks of inflammation, but as all sorts 

 of violent remedies are employed, this may be due to them rather 

 than to idiopathic disease. The lungs also are generally congested, 



