HYDROTHORAX. 139 
Now comes the sad inquiry, what is the cause of pleurisy? All kinds 
of things may excite it; but those things which lead to so much suffering 
in an inoffensive animal, are under the control of man. Overexertion, 
being driven or ridden far and fast, the spirit being stimulated, and the 
energy promoted by potent drinks; for men will give the contents of 
the public-house to the horse when a wager is at stake, and will lash, 
while the limbs can move, to win any pitiful bet,—these circumstances 
not unfrequently provoke pleurisy. Injuries received externally not un- 
seldom start up internal inflammation. Hurts calculated to lead to so 
serious an evil, together with broken ribs, will not be surprising to those 
who have seen the unseemly instruments which man will, in his rage, 
seize upon to strike the animal with. Colds, aggravated by change of 
temperature, as waiting long in the rain and being flurried home after- 
ward; inattention in feeding, thus generating a plethora, is apt to dis- 
order any internal organ, and many other such like causes will generate 
the disease. 
And what right has man to inflict so much agony upon any life in- 
trusted to his care? What right has humanity to complain of tyranny 
in its superiors, when the human race can neglect and entail such anguish 
upon the beings beneath them? The greed of gain or the pride of win- 
ning are the first motives assigned as the promoters of this terrible afflic- 
tion; next come the gratifications of passion; then follows carelessness 
for another’s welfare, etc. Which of these several causes is worth the 
torture of a living body? such torture, too, as the rack cannot equal, 
and human malice is happily forbidden to rival! 
A little self-restraint instilled by a better plan of education, a little 
more humanity enforced by the teachers of religion, to instruct that man 
should not view himself as the owner of the earth which he temporarily 
inhabits; that man should not consider himself the proprietor of the 
lives which share the globe with him; that man should be actuated by 
genuine CHRISTIAN LOVE toward all animated nature, feeling kindly for 
the lives akin to his own, and acknowledging, as fellow-sojourners, the 
creatures by which he is surrounded,—then, how much affliction might be 
eradicated from that which wickedness alone renders a “vale of tears!” 
HYDROTHORAX. 
This is the consequence of the latter stage of pleurisy; or rather, to 
speak with caution, we fear it is often the result of the severe treatment 
adopted to dispel that malady. 
Man leaves his property, which is very ill of pleurisy over night, hope- 
less that the animal can survive till morning. On returning, however, 
