THEIR PATHOLOGY, DIAGNOSIS, AND TREATMENT. 57 



ceit and ignorance, unchecked as it should be by the intelligence of the 

 master, indulges itself in conspiring with the farrier, as ignorant as him- 

 self, in torturing the poor dumb beast well nigh to madness with the lampas 

 iron, causing inexpressible pain, and frequently causing damage to the 

 horse for life. 



Lampas is almost if not entirely restricted to young horses, and is 

 probably a mild sympathetic inflammation of the parts consequent on the 

 development of the teeth, and it is of ten directly caused by a sudden change 

 from soft food to dry corn. No medicinal treatment is necessary, simply 

 feed on soft food, mashes, with boilei linseed, steamed carrots, and a few 

 oats softened in the same way adder), and nature will do her work quickly 

 and well. Above all, permit no meddling ; the barbarous practices referred 

 to must die with the spread of knowledge, but such ignorant prejudices 

 are hard to kill, and it behoves every intelligent horseowner to assist 

 in stamping them out. 



Larvae in the Skin. — The presence of these pests is known by the 

 appearance cf small lump3 like very diminutive molehills chiefly on the 

 back, and often supposed to be and called " heat lumps." They are found 

 on horses that have been out to grass in the summer ; they appear in the 

 course of the winter, increasing in size as spring advances, and cause very 

 considerable annoyance and so much pain from pressure of the saddle as 

 to make the horse restive, and indeed unfit for work. These lumps are 

 caused by the presence of a grub or maggot, which gets possession in 

 the following singular manner : When in the fields in summer the horse 

 is surrounded with insects of many various kinds, and by them subjected 

 to much annoyance, and I may say, indignity, for, as explained in the 

 article on Bots, they not only annoy him, but deposit their eggs on him, 

 and make him the nursery of their future broods. The eggs, producing the 

 larvae at present referred to, are deposited on the back and sides ; and 

 when, by aid of the warmth of the horse's body, a little worm is hatched 

 from the egg, it bores its way into the skin, where the bigger it grows 

 the more mischief it dees. Mr. Mayhew, in his "Illustrated Horse 

 Doctor," has given an excellent engraving of this little pest, and shows the 

 ill effects he produces. At the top of the lump formed is a small dark 

 spot, being the hole through which the larva receives the air necessary to 

 its existence ; to stop this up with tallow, beeswax, or any such substance 

 is to ensure the death of the worm, but that only renders the condition of 

 the horse worse, as the body of the maggot putrifies in the sac which 

 incloses it, and the abscess is thereby enlarged and inflammation set up, 

 which may affect materially the whole system; the best plan, therefore, 

 is to open the abscess with a lancet at the hole at the top, and then the 

 maggot can be squeezed out. When it has been removed, and all matter 

 pressed out, sponge the part with warm water and apply a little Friar's 

 balsam to the puncture. 



Lice. — Horses are sometimes infested with these troublesome and 

 disgusting parasites, but only those that are kept in a filthy state, half 



