48 SPECIFIC OPHTHALMIA. 
four hours. Five huge creatures have been cabined there, living by day, 
sleeping by night, feeding and performing all the other offices of nature. 
Is it astonishing that the air feels and smells close? Ought we not 
rather to wonder that animal life can exist in such an atmosphere? The 
chief contamination is ammonia; ammonia will not support vitality. 
The reader has inhaled smelling salts; those are purified carbonate of 
ammonia; have these not made the eyes water? The ammonia of the 
stable affects the eye of the horse; it also undermines the constitution ; 
but, by constantly entering upon the lungs and stimulating the eyes, it 
causes the constitutional disease to first affect the visual organs; in 
short, specific ophthalmia is generated. 
Now, to prove the case here stated. In the south of Ireland, where 
poverty prevails, humanity is obliged to shelter itself in strange places, 
and any hole is there esteemed good lodging for a horse. In that part 
of the kingdom ophthalmia affects the majority of animals; it not only 
preys on horses, but it seizes upon mankind; for the author, a few years 
ago, was much struck by the quantity of blind beggars to be encountered 
in the streets of Cork. Here we have the conclusion of the argument; 
its moral exemplified and enforced. If animals are foully housed and 
poorly kept, they generate disorders, which at length extend to the 
human race; therefore he who contends for a better treatment of the 
horse, also indirectly pleads for the immunity of mankind from certain 
diseases. Man cannot hold life as a property, or abuse life without his 
ill deeds by the ordinances of nature recoiling on himself. 
Specific ophthalmia is a constitutional disease affecting the eyes; it 
has been submitted to all kinds of rude treatment; no cruelty but has 
been experimented with; no barbarity but has been resorted to. It has 
been traced to various sources; its origin has been frequently detected ; 
but the real cause of the disease, to this day, has not been recognized. 
The veterinary surgeon is often sent for to just look at a horse which 
“has got a hay-seed in its eye.” This 
mistake is very common, as ophthalmia gen- 
erally breaks forth during the long night 
hours, while the stable is made secure and 
| the confined air is foulest. The groom sees 
an animal with a pendant, swollen lid, and 
with a cheek bedewed by copious tears; he 
SV Pix can imagine only an accident; but the medi- 
THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF srEcIFIC cal examiner must obey the summons with 
OPHTHALMIA. 
an unprejudiced mind, because simple oph- 
thalmia is a mere misfortune, specific ophthalmia is a constitutional 
disorder. 
