276 BROKEN WIND. 



in removing the thickening of the membrane, for counter-irritants, extensively 

 and perseveringly applied to the external parietes of the chest, may do some- 

 thing. If thick-wind immediately followed bronchitis, it would certainly be 

 justifiable practice to blister the brisket and sides, and that repeatedly ; and to 

 administer purgatives if we dared, or diuretics, more effectual than the pur- 

 gatives and always safe. 



Our attention must be principally confined to diet and management. A thick- 

 winded horse should have his full proportion, or rather more than his proportion of 

 corn, and a diminished quantity of less nutritious food, in order that the stomach 

 may never be overloaded, and press upon the diaphragm, and so upon the lungs, 

 and increase thelabour of these already over-worked organs. Particular care should 

 be taken that the horse is not worked immediately after a full meal. The over- 

 coming of the pressure and weight of the stomach will be a serious addition to the 

 extra work which the lungs already have to perform from their altered structure. 



Something may be done in the palliation of thick-wind, and more than has 

 been generally supposed, by means of exercise. If the thick- winded horse is 

 put, as it were, into a regular system of training ; if he is daily exercised to the 

 fair extent of his power, and without seriously distressing him, his breathing 

 will become freer and deeper, and his wind will materially improve. We shall 

 call to our aid one of the most powerful excitants of the absorbent system — 

 pressure, that of the air upon the tube — the working part of the lung upon the 

 disorganised — and, adjusting this so as not to excite irritation or inflammation, 

 we may sometimes do wonders. This is the very secret of training, and the 

 power and the durability of the hunter and the racer depend entirely upon this. 



Thick wind, however, is not always the consequence of disease. There are 

 certain cloddy, round-chested horses, that are naturally thick-winded, at least 

 to a certain extent. They are capable of that slow exertion for which nature 

 designed them, but they are immediately distressed if put a little out of their 

 usual pace. A circular chest, whether the horse is large or small, indicates 

 thick-wind. The circular chest is a capacious one, and the lungs which fill it 

 are large, and they supply sufficient arterialised blood to produce plenty of flesh 

 and fat, and these horses are always fat. This is the point of proof to which 

 we look, when all that we want from the animal is flesh and fat ; but the 

 expanding form of the chest is that which we require in the animal of speed — 

 the deep as well as the broad chest — always capacious for the purpose of mus- 

 cular strength, and becoming considerably more so when arterialised blood is 

 rapidly expended in quick progression. We cannot enlarge the capacity of a 

 circle ; and if more blood is to be furnished, that which cannot be done by increaes 

 of surface must be accomplished by frequency of action. Therefore it is that 

 all our heavy draught-horses are thick- winded. It is of little detriment to them, 

 for their work is slow ; or rather it is an advantage to them, for the circular 

 chest, always at its greatest capacity, enables them to acquire that weight which 

 it is so advantageous for them to throw into the collar. 



BROKEN-WIND. 



This is immediately recognisable by the manner of breathing. The in- 

 spiration is performed in somewhat less than the natural time, and with an 

 increased degree of labour : but the expiration has a peculiar difficulty accom- 

 panying it. It is accomplished by a double effort, in the first of which, as 

 Mr. Blaine has well explained it, " the usual muscles operate ; and in the other 

 the auxiliary muscles, particularly the abdominal, are put on the stretch to 

 complete the expulsion more perfectly ; and, that being done, the flank falls, or 

 the abdominal muscles relax with a kind of jerk or spasm." 



The majority of veterinary surgeons attribute broken wind to an emphyse- 



