2 Roaring in Horses. 



are greatly developed; and yet, notwithstanding this pro- 

 vision, a very slight cause will render them seriously imper- 

 fect, limit the employment, and gravely depreciate the value 

 of what may be otherwise a most valuable animal. For this 

 reason it is that horsemen have, from the earliest times, 

 paid particular attention to respiration in horses, and 

 though, until recently, they were but little, if at all, ac- 

 quainted with the nature of the causes which produced 

 changes in this function, and could not even distinguish 

 between various morbid conditions, yet they appeared to 

 have readily perceived that there was something wrong, 

 which they designated by terms generally more expressive 

 than intelligent or elegant. Some of these cant term.s have 

 come down to our own day, and are in common use. Nearly 

 all of them refer to one symptom — that which is most 

 obvious — the noise caused by obstructed respiration, and to 

 the differences in the sound. 



Therefore it is that, in old works on farriery, and among 

 horse-dealers and horse-copers of nowadays, we meet with such 

 designations as "roarers," ''pipers," "wheezers," "whistlers," 

 "grunters," "high-blowers," "bellowed bulls," etc., applied to 

 horses which make a noise in breathing : the terms being 

 intended to mark differences in the quality and intensity of 

 the sound. Asthma, or "broken wind," and the noises 

 emitted from the air-passages during movement (sometimes 

 designated " pursiveness ") have usually been applied to the 

 same cause or causes by those English authorities of the 

 last and previous centuries, whose treatises on the diseases 

 of the horse are yet accessible. 



This is noticed, for instance, in Gibson's work,^ wdiich 

 appeared in the commencement of the eighteenth century, 

 in which he remarks : " We may observe that horses that 

 have no inward infirmity blow and wheeze, from an imper- 

 fection in the passages between the nose and mouth, which 

 happens the more readily to horses, as they draw in and 

 1 " The Farrier's New Guide," 4th edition, London, 1725. 



