FARCY. I8 y 



ing unimpaired ; and, at other times, running on to its fatal termination with a 

 rapidity perfectly astonishing. 



Farcy has been confounded with other diseases ; but he must be careless or 

 ignorant who mistook sprain for it. The inflammation is too circumscribed 

 and too plainly connected with the joint or the tendon. 



It may be readily distinguished from grease or swelled legs. In grease there 

 is usually some crack or scurfiness, a peculiar tenseness and redness and glossi- 

 ness of the skin, some ichorous discharge, and a singular spasmodic catching 

 up of the leg. 



In farcy the engorgement is even more sudden than that of grease. The 

 horse is well to-day, and to-morrow he is gorged from the fetlock to the haunch, 

 and although there is not the same redness or glossiness, there is great tender- 

 ness, a burning heat in the limb and much general fever. It is simultaneous 

 inflammation of all the absorbents of the limb. 



Surfeit can scarcely be confounded with farcy or glanders. It is a pustular 

 eruption — surfeit-lumps as they are called, and terminating in desquamation, 

 not in ulceration, although numerous, yet irregularly placed, and never follow- 

 ing the course of the absorbents, but scattered over the skin. 



Local dropsy of the cellular membrane, and particularly that enlargement 

 beneath the thorax which has the strange appellation of water-farcy, have none 

 of the characters of real farcy. It is general debility to a greater or less degree, 

 and not inflammation of the absorbents. If properly treated, it soon disappears, 

 except that, occasionally, at the close of some serious disease, it indicates a 

 breaking up of the constitution. 



Farcy, like glanders, springs from infection and from bad stable management. 

 It is produced by all the causes which give rise to glanders, with this difference 

 that it is more frequently generated, and sometimes strangely prevalent in 

 particular districts. It will attack, at the same time, several horses in the 

 same ill-conducted stable, and others in the neighbourhood who have been 

 exposed to the same predisposing causes. Some have denied that it is a con- 

 tagious disease. They must have had little experience. It is true that the 

 matter of farcy must come in contact with a wound or sore, in order to com- 

 municate the disease ; but accustomed as horses are to nibble and play with 

 each other, and sore as the corners of the mouth are frequently rendered by 

 the bit, it is easy to imagine that this may be easily effected ; and experience 

 tells us, that a horse having farcy ulcers cannot be suffered to remain with 

 others without extreme risk. 



The treatment of farcy differs with the form that it assumes. As a general 

 rule, and especially when the buttons or buds are beginning to appear, a mild 

 dose of physic should first be administered. The buds should then be carefully 

 examined, and if any of them have broken, the budding-iron, at a dull red heat, 

 should be applied. If pus should be felt in them, showing that they are dis- 

 posed to break, they should be penetrated with the iron. These wounds should 

 be daily inspected, and if, when the slough of the cautery comes off, they look 

 pale, and foul, and spongy, and discharge a thin matter, they should be fre- 

 quently washed with a strong lotion of corrosive sublimate, dissolved in rectified 

 spirit. When the wounds begin to look red, and the bottom of them is even 

 and firm, and they discharge a thick white or yellow matter, the Friar's balsam 

 will usually dispose them to heal. 



As, however, the constitution is now tainted, local applications will not be 

 sufficient, and the disease must be attacked by internal medicine as soon as the 

 physic has ceased to operate. 



Corrosive sublimate used to be a favourite medicine, combined with tonics, 

 and repeated morning and night until the ulcers disappeared, unless the mouth 



