56 STABLE MANUAL AND HORSE DOCTOR 



a bluish grey colour, or which have a flat, retracted, and 

 sunken appearance, or those of a longish oval figure, are 

 predisposed to ophthalmia. When the eyes appear full, 

 with a fleshy circle round them, these are symptoms of bad 

 eyes, and often the forerunners of blindness, particularly in 

 the heads of coarse and fleshy horses, with heavy counten- 

 ances, who frequently go blind with cataract at seven years 

 old. Slight thickenings of the lid, or puckering towards 

 the inner corner of the eye, a difference in size, a cloudiness 

 or dulness of the iris, are indications of disease. 



In examining the eyes, both must have an equal degree 

 of light ; should any difference be apparent between them, 

 one is diseased. The transparent cornea should be, as its 

 name implies, perfectly clear. 



Specks are best detected by standing at the shoulder ; 

 if one is evident, and it can be clearly proved to be no 

 more than the effect of accident, no importance need be 

 attached to it. But it is impossible to ascertain this, and 

 therefore the safest course is to assume that natural irrit- 

 ability and consequent inflammation of the eye is the 

 cause. 



Specks on the transparent cornea are generally the result 

 of external injury ; there is seldom more than one. When 

 very small and near the circumference, they are of little 

 consequence ; but if large, or near the centre, they interfere 

 with distinctness of vision, and make the horse shy. If 

 opaque or milky lines are traced on its surface, it indicates 

 the remains of former inflammation. 



But it is necessary to observe that horses, before they 

 are six years old, have not that transparency in their eyes 

 which they display afterwards, because while young and 

 growing the vessels of the eye are full, therefore before 

 that age it is not the brilliancy of the eye that denotes 

 its goodness. If there is excess of tears, it denotes 

 debility, and should occasion a more than ordinary 

 scrutiny ; in fact, all horses with weeping, dull, cloudy 

 eyes should be rejected. 



It may be remarked, as a general rule, that diseases of 

 the eye are incurable. Have nothing to do with a horse 

 when the trace of disease of the eye is visible. It is 

 impossible, in a brief examination, to distinguish between 

 simple ophthalmia and inflammation of the conjunctiva — 

 the cause of which may have been a blow, or the intro- 



