204 MAD STAGGERS — RHEUMATIC FEVER ; [BOOK II. 



a neighbourhood by such events. None can say, 

 however, until the experiment be tried, whether 

 animals fed on such meat might not acquire rabies 

 thereby; if our animals of the cams dindi felts species 

 that are much fed on horte-flesh be not thereby dis- 

 posed to contract madness. 



No remedy can be proposed for such a dreadful 

 malady, better than the knacker's knife or axe. 



Mad staggers, as the term is, which has never 

 been satisfactorily accounted for, can be no other 

 than this delirium of the typhus fever, brought on 

 by pushing the animal in his work although labour- 

 ing under slow fever. None but common or or- 

 dinary cart-horses are lost in the staggers ; whilst 

 none but a very ordinary owner would so force his 

 cattle to the last extremity during illness. As the 

 above is all we shall find it necessary to say of 

 staggers, we must here remark on the singular im- 

 propriety of Mr. Richard Lawrence's considering 

 this as an attack of apoplexy ! Since one pang 

 alone denotes the death so to be named. 



Rheumatic fever is one of those disorders in 

 the horse upon the existence of which doctors dis- 

 agree ; but doubtless the vicissitudes of heat and 

 cold to which the horse is subjected, whereby the 

 whole system is checked so as to occasion general 

 fever, is equally likely to check the circulation or 

 the muscular action in one or two limbs only. And 

 the pain the animal would thus labour under in the 

 performance of its duties would in time constitute 

 one of the causes assigned higher up for simple fever. 



