CHRONIC DYSENTERY. 175 
between the necessary and the poisonous dose is too close for the un- 
educated to comprehend it; more horses have been slaughtered with 
aloes than have perished from all the other poisons conjoined. Yet 
grooms are particularly fond of this medicine; the dangerous drug 
enters into every ball which is popular in the stable; no matter how 
opposite the end desired may be, in the groom’s opinion aloes must 
produce it. Like the majority of the uneducated, the stable-man re- 
joices in a strong purge. Tenesmus is his delight; he loves to see six- 
teen or eighteen full motions, and then he cannot comprehend why the 
horse is weak, since the physic passed beautifully through him! 
Of all persons living, grooms generally are the most prejudiced and 
the worst informed. All advice is disregarded; should the master 
speak, the groom shakes his head, and, after the lecture is ended, in- 
quires of himself, ‘what the old buffer can know about it?” Here is 
the curse of horses! Gentlemen transfer them to the custody of the 
uneducated. The groom is accepted as an authority; the master asks 
for and is mostly governed by the opinion of an inferior. No other 
servant possesses such a power; no domestic more abuses his position, 
the carriage and the harness maker, the corn merchant, and the veteri- 
nary surgeon all pay this person five per cent. upon the employer’s bills; 
nothing comes on to the premises but the man claims a profit from it, 
nothing leaves the stable but is regarded as his perquisite. He thus, 
while occupying a situation of trust, has an absolute interest in the ex- 
travagance of the expenditure. Wear and tear of the articles over 
which he watches brings to him actual emolument; his interest and his 
duty are at war, and when a weak person has to decide the battle, it is 
easy to understand on which part the victory will be declared. 
CHRONIC DYSENTERY. 
This affliction is not so common among horses as it is with cattle; 
neither is it so frequent at the present day as it appears to have formerly 
been. Once it was termed “molten grease,” from an unfounded notion 
that liquid fat was discharged with the feces. Now it is known that what 
our ancestors took for grease is no more than the mucus, which is ex- 
pelled during every form of severe intestinal irritation. 
The cause of chronic dysentery among horses is not well understood. 
It is said to follow diarrhea; but such an explanation seems to con- 
found the commencement of one disorder with the establishment of 
another disease. Horses having chronic dysentery are, generally, old 
animals, which are subject to the will of a very poor or a very penurious 
man. They are badly kept, and may have to grub a scanty living from 
