158 CHRONIC HEPATITIS. 
to starvation; he begrudges the keep of the animal, therefore, he dis- 
guises the ugliness of his feeling under a pretense of giving the horse a 
month’s freedom and its natural food! In spring, when the herbage is 
young, one hour night and morning might be excused ; but those hours 
must be before the flies are up, and after these pests are asleep. In the 
height of summer, when the grass has perished and the ground is hard, 
the health soon yields to constant exposure and to unwholesome food. 
The flies torment the animal, and from the shed it is often driven by its 
companions in the field. A large portion of the accidents which horses 
are liable to, occur while out at grass; many an animal is released from 
the stable blooming and valuable; it is, at the expiration of the month, 
brought home looking ragged, with a huge belly, and is never fit for a 
day’s service subsequently. If the matter is to be regarded only in a 
money point of view, it would have been a saving to the owner to have 
paid a twelvemonth’s keep, rather than lose his servant, and notwith- 
standing, afterward have to pay for food and treatment till experience 
had instructed him in the inutility of expecting restoration. But when 
the matter is considered in a moral sense, what right has that individual 
who has, for his own pleasure, accustomed a life to a particular form of 
diet, at his will, or for his convenience, to snatch the food from the creat- 
ure and drive it forth to gnaw at stalks which had shed their seeds, and 
to be exposed to all the variations of the season? It is no excuse to 
talk about there being no work to be done while the master is at the 
sea-side ; the devotion of a life should have earned a brief support, and 
the gentleman whose avarice thinks otherwise has no just reason to 
complain of the punishment which the indulgence of his greed will 
probably insure. 
CHRONIC HEPATITIS. 
Acute hepatitis is unknown among horses in England. The late 
Professor Sewell thought he had witnessed one case. Other people 
know they have not seen a single instance of such a disease. 
Chronic hepatitis is peculiar to maturity. Brewers’ horses—huge 
animals, fattened upon refuse of the mash-tub, and which are paraded, 
in all the pride of obesity, drawing one small cask over the stones of 
London—are often attacked hy this malady. All horses which consume 
much provender, without absolute regard to work, are exposed to it. 
Gentlemen’s carriage horses are very liable to it. A private vehicle is 
started, and at first much used; but after a time it is equally neglected. 
The individual does not want the carriage to-day, when the coachman 
comes round ‘‘for orders.” Neither is it required on the next occasion. 
Often a week passes without the fashionable plaything being uncovered. 
