246 STABLE ECONOMY. 



gentle sweat is also a good remedy. As the horse recovers 

 his spirits, let him return by degrees to the diet which his 

 work demands. 



To prevent plethora, it is customary, in hunting and other 

 stables where the work is only occasional, yet very severe 

 and requiring a liberal diet, to give an alterative now and 

 then. Black antimony, nitre and sulphur, four drachms of 

 each, form a useful alterative for blank days. Hunters of 

 keen appetite, and legs which will not stand full work, are 

 not easily kept in order : they may have a ball every week, 

 or twice a week during the working season. It should be 

 given an hour before the last feed, in a little bran-mash. On 

 the dav before work, it is forbidden. 



Influenza and plethora* are often confounded. The symp- 

 toms of plethora are very like those which we have at the 

 beginning of influenza ; but the treatment is different, and 

 distinction must be made. If the symptoms of plethora ap- 

 pear without any change in the diet, or work sufficient to ac- 

 count for them, it is very likely the horse is taking the in- 

 fluenza, which, in many stables, is usually called the dis- 

 temper. A veterinarian ought to be consulted. Influenza is 

 in general accompanied by great weakness, often some sore- 

 ness of the throat, a little cough, a watery discharge from the 

 nose, swelling of the eyelids, stiffness, a peculiar state of the 

 pulse, and several other symptoms by which the veterinarian 

 can distinguish it from plethora. 



Humors. — Everybody has heard of " humors flying about 

 the horse." It is an old stable phrase, and still a great favor- 

 ite. The horse is not well, vet he is not ill. There is al- 

 ways something wrong with him. One month he has swelled 

 legs, another he has inflamed eyes, another he has some tu- 

 mors about him, or some eruption on the skin, and so .on all 

 the year through. He is hardly cured of one disease till he 

 is attacked by some other ; and perhaps he never does any 

 good till he changes hands, when he soon becomes an excel- 

 lent horse, always ready for his food and for his work. This 

 often happens. Plethora, repeatedly excited, is the cause. 



The stabling, or the grooming, may have been bad ; the 

 horse unequally fed, or irregularly worked — some weeks 

 half-starved, others surfeited to plethora — sometimes idle for 

 -, month, and sometimes over-worked for a month. He does 



• I ought sooner to have mentioned, that among stablemen plethora is 

 dually termed foulness. The horse is said to be foul. I have rejected this 

 me, because, in Scotland, a glandered horse is termed foul. 



