74 STABLE MANUAL AND HORSE DOCTOR 



winter never below 50^. With horses, however, that must 

 be kept up to the bright coat, we may spring a few degrees, 

 and say 68^ as an average. As temperature is intimately 

 mixed up with ventilation, and that with light, it is desir- 

 able to have the stables sufficiently airy without cold or 

 draughts. 



It is taught in the old books that the horse, and the 

 blood-horse especially, being originally the denizens of a 

 torrid country, require not only warmth but heat in this 

 northern latitude. This notion was formerly carried to a 

 most mischievous extent. Moderate warmth is doubtless 

 congenial to all horses ; but a high temperature is only 

 permissible in a stable to produce and maintain the artificial 

 state to which our summer-flyers of Oriental descent are 

 brought for their few speedy strides over the turf, on the 

 rare occasion of their carrying the silken jacket and its 

 light-weight wearer. Such animals have their clothes on 

 when led or ridden to paddock, or tan-gallop, close to 

 the door of their country seat whereat they train and 

 exercise. 



Nevertheless, even in this exceptional class, the excessive 

 heat, especially in stables where there are several horses, is 

 by no means necessary or beneficial even to the horse of 

 stainless blood. Many of these have we seen — the more the 

 pity ! — who, worn by age, lameness, or accident, or per- 

 chance rejected for vice, engaged in the meanest and hardest 

 service ; as well as exposed in all weathers, working in a 

 hansom cab ! Yet do such unfortunate outcasts from 

 aristocratic horse-palaces adapt themselves to circumstances, 

 and live to the average period of the fashionable racer ; 

 Y3roof positive that the respiratory and secretory organs 

 had kept their efficiency under all the variations of 

 temperature of our variable climate. 



In confined stables, where the same air is breathed over 

 and over again, and where the heat exhales unwholesome 

 effluvia from every excrementitious matter, to clog the lungs 

 and prevent the due oxygenation of the blood, where, too, 

 the very food is deteriorated by these exhalations, we have 

 a large percentage of the diseases which go to swell the 

 treatises and lengthen the bills of our veterinary professors. 

 The improvements in the ventilation of the stables of our 

 cavalry horses have, of late years, wonderfully diminished 

 inflamed lungs, with its perpetual v. s. {vence sectio) in the 



