ABDOMINAL INJURIES. 189 
is stopped. However different the causes of abdominal injury may 
appear, they are each generally characterized by the severest possible 
abdominal pain. This symptom is often so violent that the agony con- 
ceals all other indications; or if any others can be exhibited, they are 
so partially shown and displayed for so very brief a space as not to per- 
mit of their being rightly interpreted. 
It is very desirable that every one should witness a powerful horse in 
its agony. No stronger means could be found for enforcing such a les- 
son than the sufferings which spring from abdominal injuries. When 
this is proposed it is not intended the person should look on misery 
only so long as the spectacle stimulated his feelings; but that he should 
watch hour after hour and behold the afflicted life resigned under the 
pressure of mighty torment. Were such a sight once contemplated— 
were man fully conscious of how brimming with horrible expression 
every feature of the horse’s frame can become—the thought of anguish 
wrenching life out of so huge a trunk would surely compel the better | 
treatment of a gentle, inoffensive, and serviceable slave. Ruptured 
stomach a little forethought would prevent. The triple phosphate cal- 
culus is common among willers’ horses, which are foully fed from the 
sweepings of the shop. But if man will oblige duty to bow before con- 
venience, or make it secondary to expense, the misery he inflicts will 
surely in justice recoil upon himself. 
Abdominal injuries are probably the sources of the greatest agony 
horse-flesh can endure. ‘T'o account for the generality of such lesions, it 
is merely necessary to regard the places in which horses are housed and 
the manner in which they are fed. In the owner’s estimation a horse 
seems to be a horse, in the same sense as a table is a table. Both ob- 
jects are necessary to his comfort, to his pride, or to his profit. Neither 
have higher claims. Both are to be used and to be flung aside. The 
one is to be cleaned and repaired at the cheapest rate; the other is to 
be lodged and supported at the lowest cost. When either grow old in 
his service, each is equally to be discarded. The two things apparently 
rank in man’s estimation as simple chattels subject to his will and made 
to please his fancy. That there is a huge life, a breathing sensibility 
attached to one of these articles; that it delights in its master’s pleasure, 
and, if properly trained, it is capable of sharing its master’s emotions, 
is so preposterous a sentimentality as to be ‘with scorn rejected.” 
Nobody speaks of the horse as a creature enjoying man’s highest 
gift—as a living animal. Everybody talks about his or her constitu- 
tion; but no one imagines the horse has a constitution which can be 
destroyed. All horses are expected to thrive equally. They are re- 
garded as things to be used, and to be sold or packed away when not 
