80 



•WHAT DISEASES CONSTITUTE UNSOUNDNESS OR VICE. 



Water farcy. 



Founder. 



therefore there is a narrow strip of horn of a different and 

 lighter colour. 



Farcy. Farcy, which is a disease of the absorbents of the skin, 



is an unsoundness. It is immediately connected with 

 glanders {p) ; they will run into each other, or their 

 symptoms will mingle together ; and before either arrives 

 at its fatal termination, its associate will almost invariably 

 appear. An animal inoculated with the matter of farej/ 

 will often be aiSicted with glanders, while the matter of 

 glanders will frequently produce farcy. They are different 

 types or stages of the same disease. There is, however, a 

 very material difference in their symptoms and progress ; 

 and this most important of all, that while glanders are 

 generally incurable, farcy, in its early stage and mild form, 

 may be successfully treated (g). 



Water farcy, confounded by name with the common 

 farcy, is a dropsical (;-) affection of the skin, either of the 

 chest or of the limbs generally (g), and is also an unsoundness. 

 Inflammation of the foot, or aczite founder, is generally 

 caused by suffering a horse to stand iu the cold or wet after 

 being hard ridden or driven, and is called " fever in the 

 feet." This fever is not easily subdued ; and, if it be sub- 

 dued, it sometimes leaves after it some fearful consequences. 

 The loss of the hoof is not an unfrequent one (s). A 

 horse, therefore, which either has "fever in the feet," or 

 has been at all injured by it, is unsound. 



Gibbing. For gihUng, see Backing and Gibbing {t). 



Glanders. The most formidable of all the diseases to which the 



horse is subject is glanders. It is described by writers 

 fifteen hundred years ago ; and it was then, and is now, 

 not only a loathsome, but an incurable, disease. The 

 most early and unquestionable symptom of glanders, is an 

 increased discharge from one or both nostrils; different 

 from the discharge of catarrh, because it is usually lighter 

 and clearer in its colour, and more glutinous or sticky. It 

 is not discharged occasionally and in large quantities like 

 the mucus of catarrh, but it is constantly running from the 

 nostril («). It need hardly be said that a glandered horse 

 has on him the worst sort of unsoundness. 



{p) Glanders, post. 



(q) Lib. V. K. "The Horse," 

 128, 131. 



(r) Dropsy, ante, p. 78. 



(s) Lib. U. K. "The Horse," 

 290. 



[t) Backing and Gibbing, ante, p. 

 66. 



(m) Lib. V. K. "The Horse," 

 121 ; and see Farcy, ante. In an 

 American case ( Woodbury t. Robbing, 

 10 Gush. (Mass.) .520), it was held 



