HEAVES, OR BROKER WItiD. 467 



short cough or grunt while the air is being expelled from the lungs. Heaves are 

 never found in the racing stable where the horses are properly fed. They are 

 always found among cart or team horses which are fed upon large quantities of 

 coarse food or hay. The seat of the disease is found in the air-cells of the lungs, in 

 the form of enlargements and sometimes ruptures of the cells. The cause of the dis- 

 ease is the immense quantity of hay forced into the stomach, the greedy animal 

 perhaps, not being satisfied with his allowance, eating the bedding. The bowels and 

 stomach press hard against the diaphragm, and the lungs not having room to expand, 

 the air-cells are enlarged or ruptured, and the horse is said to have the heaves. Much 

 has been said by different authors in relation to the curability of the heaves. Some 

 advocate one means, some another, among which is feeding on the Western plains, 

 or upon prairie hay, which is said to contain a " resin weed ;'' but like many other 

 remedies, it is only palliative. 



In 1843 Capt. Squiers, of Buffalo, N. Y., who commanded on the steamboat 

 Dewitt Clinton, owned a valuable trotting mare called Caroline. She had the 

 heaves badly. He took her, in the spring of that year, to Chicago, anfl turned her 

 out to pasture on the prairie, for the purpose of curing the disease. In the fall he 

 brought her back on his boat, with a quantity 1 of prairie hay to keep her during 

 the winter. But upon returning again to timothy hay, the heaves returned 

 as bad as before sent west. (The writer was personally acquainted with Capt. 

 Squiers, he being proprietor of the Courter House at that time, where the writer 

 boarded with him.) 



Prairie hay and grass is more laxative than timothy hay, and the animal cannot 

 eat half as much in a given time of the former as of the latter. Consequently it 

 promotes a condition favorable to respiration, by stimulating the bowels, and also 

 prevents pressure upon the lungs. I think there are several other means of treat- 

 ment equally as good as prairie, grass or hay ; one is corn-stalk fodder. My reason 

 is founded on this basis, that it is by saccharine matter that most animals subsist, 

 and the less compass occupied in the bowels the better. . One quart of oats is equal to 

 an armful of hay; and three pounds of corn leaves contain more sugar than six times 

 the bulk of timothy hay. It Will be seen, then, that the cause, treatment, and cure 

 are marked in these few words ; that is, that heaves are produced by pressure upon 

 the diaphragm' by too much food in the stomach and bowels, and is cured by lessen- 

 ing the quantity of food to occupy the same space. After the hprse is turned out to 

 grass a few days, the heaves will usually disappear, from the fact that the bowels 

 are generally relaxed by exercise and pure air. The only treatment which will prove 

 to any degree effective, is to give one of the following remedies : — 



Powdered ginger ' .' J oz. 



Capsicum J oz. 



Form into a ball, and give three nights in succession ; then omit 

 two or three nights, and give again two or three nights in succession. 

 Or— 



Tincture of phosphorus 8 or 10 drops. 



Give in th£ drink several times a day for eight or ten days. 

 The horse should have regular exercise^ and be watered often with a small quan- 

 tity at a time, and have straw instead of hay to eat Under this treatment heaves 

 will disappear. * 



* The foregoing is a synopsis of Dr. Summerville'e lecture to the writer on " Heaves." 



