82 SCALD MOUTH. 
natural level is attained. This should be followed by the frequent use 
of the wash recommended for aphtha, or by the chloride of zinc lotion. 
It may probably provoke a laugh among gentlemen and horsemen to 
read of toothache in the horse. Few, very few grooms may have wit- 
nessed or have noticed such a disease, but the fact exists; it is, indeed, 
a cruel reality to the animal which experiences it. The ignorance of 
stable men can establish nothing, for they are, as a class, equally pre- 
sumptuous and ignorant; they have seen the horse for years, and yet are 
acquainted with neither the natural ailments nor the proper treatment of 
the animal. The toothache is to the creature a most agonizing dis- 
order. We have only to look at the healthy horse, to observe how 
exquisitely it is clothed, how finely it is framed, to imagine how sensi- 
tive must be the body. The horse seems capable of a fear the most 
cowardly of mankind never conceived. So its face, though not made for 
expression, can denote an anguish which the human mind fortunately has 
no capacity to picture. The eye is often painful in its speaking. It 
embodies a desperation, a weariness of the world, and a prayer for 
death, such as few people comprehend ; or the cry would rise, from the 
length and breadth of the land, demanding, as with one voice, the more 
Christian treatment of man’s fellow-creature. 
SCALD MOUTH. 
This is an accident which occasionally occurs where grooms are too 
ignorant, or too thoughtless to read the direction labeled upon every 
bottle sent into the stable. Potent fluids are sometimes transmitted 
pure, in small bottles, though the custom is highly reprehensible ; nor is the 
practice bettered because the label orders the contents to be mixed with 
water before the medicine is administered to the horse. Grooms are 
generally careless, and proverbially in a hurry; one of them enters the 
stable to give the drench, sees the bottle, seizes it in haste, calls the helper 
nearest the stable door, and, with such assistance, pours the liquid fire 
down the animal’s throat. 
The mouth is by the potent drug deprived of its lining membrane, and 
the stomach is lastingly injured; even if the dose be too small to oc- 
casion death, the interior of the mouth is rendered raw. Fortunate is the 
man who can be certain the evil there begins and extends no farther; 
but who can calculate the effect upon delicate, internal organs? The 
mouth may be healed, but who can ascertain the state of the deeper in- 
jury? Animals are treated as though their sensibilities were not affected 
by any medium pain; something must be visible before the groom sanc- 
tions the right in his charge to be restless. All signs and motions 
