4 UTILITY OF STUDY. [BOOK I. 



exhaustion of animal strength, we consider a failure 

 of stamina. 



2. The utility of such a study would seem at a 

 casual glance, to end at the beginning, by teaching 

 the reader that he ought to reject altogether such 

 ill-formed horses as might be deemed incurable ; but 

 it is nevertheless equally true, that some of those 

 disorders lie concealed from our view at the time of 

 purchase, at least, so that the most wary among us 

 are liable to be imposed upon by art or our own 

 inadvertence ; whilst those who study the subject as 

 matter of business will oftener be required to ex- 

 ercise their skill and judgment on diseases that de- 

 pend on malconformation, than on those which are 

 brought on simply by abuse of the animal powers, 

 by accident, by physicing, cordialing, misusage, or 

 by premature old age ; because these are acquired 

 disorders, or inflicted ones ; some of which repro- 

 duce each other, and after awhile, being further ir- 

 ritated by had built, they mix together and receive 

 the uninstructive epithet of" a complication of dis- 

 orders." 



Those disorders of birth we allude to, as having 

 such unhappy effects on the acquired disorders, are 

 those of the frame, otherwise termed its conforma- 

 tion. But there are others of the whole constitu- 

 tion, or which become constitutional in early life, 

 that must not be lost sight of; the which, when ex- 

 ercising their malign influence along with any or 

 either of the former, become indeed a real compli- 

 cation, and then only. For the same dissonance of 



