28 HORSES: 



trial, both in the case of the horse and myself. When 

 I ate three meals a day, I was, as~ nearly all men tell 

 me is the case with them, " hungry" at, often indeed 

 before, every regular meal. If the meal was not 

 forthcoming from any cause, I felt faint and my 

 stomach would " gnaw." I learned, after a time, that 

 under such circumstances a meal lost was a better 

 one gained ; that, in short, this was a disease and not 

 a natural condition at all, albeit it is- the common ex- 

 perience of most persons. No person feels faint upon 

 passing a meal, or has a gnawing stomach, except it 

 be occasioned by an irritated or unduly congested 

 state of that organ. It is a sure proof of dyspepsia 

 (using this term in its popular sense, as implying the 

 condition of the organ). Strictly speaking, the term 

 is a synonym of indigestion. 



DYSPEPSIA OR INDIGESTION 



results from giving the digestive organs more than 

 they can do. There are times when they can do 

 nothing, or next to nothing; and when to give them 

 nothing to do is curative, viz.: in fever, when we 

 observe the effort of the organism to eliminate the 

 impurities which constitute the real disease. The dis- 

 charge from the nasal mucous membrane, for example, 

 in epizootic influenza, frees the system of poisonous 

 elements, sometimes amounting to several pounds a 

 day. In this view we recognize the running at the 

 nose as the cure, and not the disease. A cribbing 

 horse, or one that will eat everything before him, no 

 less than the one with a precarious appetite, is a dys- 



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