302 STABLE MANUAL AND HORSE DOCTOR 



twice a day; digitalis, ca-lomcl, and tartarised antimony, 

 each half a drachm, with three drachms of nitre, is a good 

 formula. Mr Percivall prefers white hellebore to the 

 digitalis ; it is more active, but requires greater vigilance in 

 the attendant. 



Counter-irritation by means of setons or rowels in the 

 brisket, or the liquid blister rubbed on the throat down the 

 course of the windpipe, when the first acute symptoms have 

 abated, are often attended with good effects. Mashes, gruel, 

 and green meat should form the food of the horse, but even 

 these in stinted quantities. 



PLEURISY. 



It was formerly the practice to mix up this disorder with 

 pneumonia or inflammation of the lung; but although in 

 complicated cases the two are co-existent, yet in most 

 pleuritis is marked and distinct, and examination after 

 death shows that the substance of the lung itself is not 

 involved. The pain of the inflammation of the fine smooth 

 glistening membrane which invests the lungs is intense, 

 every breath drawn or expired by the poor animal causing 

 the irritated surfaces to crepitate in moving upon each 

 other. 



Syonptovis. — The suffering of the animal is indicated by 

 a constant pawing of the fore foot, and a looking round, 

 slight^ showing his teeth. The nostrils are dilated, as in 

 pneumonia, to assist the diflacult respiration ; but their 

 membranes are not much discoloured. Pain, on pressure of 

 the sides, is intense ; but the pulse is hard, full, and but 

 slightly accelerated until suffering has weakened the 

 system. If the s3^mptoms do not become aggravated by 

 the fifth day, a recovery may be expected. If, on the 

 contrary, a thin, wiry, and rapid pulse, with sweats and 

 restlessness come on, hydro thorax (or death) is at hand. 

 Mr. Field thus enumerates the distinctive symptoms of 

 pleurisy from pneumonia : " In the former the pulse is 

 hard and febrile, in the latter, oppressed ; the peculiar 

 saw-like respiration in the one, the difficult and convulsive 

 breathing in the other ; the absence of intense redness of 

 eyelids and nostrils in pleurisy, and its presence in 

 pneumonia ; the extreme pain of pressure in the former, 

 and the comparative insensibility in the other ; the coldness 



