T1IEIR PATHOLOGY, DIAGKCSIS, AND TREATMENT. 6b" 



in houses where there is less than a given number of cubic feet of air for 

 each, and provision for the renewal of fresh air, as it is used and becomes 

 vitiated ; but the horse is too often lodged as if the laws of nature could 

 be set at defiance with impunity, very much to the owner's loss in money, 

 although he may be unable to see it. 



Molten Grease is spoken of as a special disease in all old boohs of 

 farriery, and by the uneducated horse doctor of the present day, the theory 

 being that the inward fat of the hors9 becomes liquified, and is carried off 

 by the bowels, or, as one old writer puts it, " As for the inward grease 

 which is in the stomach bag and guts, if when onco it gets melted it be 

 not removed by art, medicine, and good feeding, it putrifies and breeds 

 those mortal diseases which inevitably destroy the horse, though it be half 

 a year or three-quarters of a year after, and this is generally the source of 

 fevers, surfeits, consumptions, &c, and such other distempers which carry 

 off infinite numbers of horses." In a similar way swelled legs were, and 

 are still, by some ignorant people, accounted for by the melting of the 

 fat nearer to the surface. The writer quoted above, in his instructions 

 how to order a hunter— many of which are thoroughly sensible — says: 

 " Lay your hand on the lower part of the horse's short ribs near the flank, 

 and if you feel his fat to be soft and tender, and to yield, as it were, under 

 your hand, then you may be confident it is unsound, and that the least 

 violent labour or travel will dissolve it, which, being dissolved ere it is 

 hardened by good diet, if it be not then removed by scouring, the fat or 

 grease belonging to the outward parts of the body will fall down into his 

 heels and so cause goutiness and swelling. I need not trouble you with 

 the outward sign3 of this distemper, they are evident to the eye ; but 

 every groom can inform you when a horse is said to have the grease fallen 

 into his heels, yet may be he cannot instruct you in the cause why travel 

 disperseth it for a time, and when the horse is cold it returns with more 

 violence than before. The reason, therefore, is this : the grea?e which by 

 indiscreet exercise and negligence in keeping is melted and fallen into his 

 legs, standing still in the stable cools and congeals, and so unites itself 

 with other ill humours which flow to the affected part, so that they stop 

 the natural circulation of the blood and cause inflammations and swell- 

 ings, as aforesaid ; but travel produceth warmth in the limbs, thaws as it 

 were the congealed humours, and disperses them throughout the body in 

 general, till rest gives them the opportunity to unite and settle again." I 

 have given the above quotations because I know that those who trust the 

 treatment of their ailing horses to grooms and farriers must often hear, as 

 I have heard, some such attempts to account for diseases that were not 

 understood. And such opinions given a3 above expressed, and with less 

 show of reason, should be a warning that those who thus empirically 

 account for a disease cannot be sa f e persons to trust with its treatment. 

 The disease which is called among the vulgar molten grease, is a chronic 

 or severe diarrhoea, accompanied with more or less fever, and the 

 discharge which was taken for liquid fat is the mucus which lines and 



