FARCY. 285 
disease. In the button variety, the tumors would only be smaller, of a 
more even size, and far more numerous. 
Farcy is, by the generality of practitioners, regarded as a more tract- 
able disease than glanders. Certainly the course of the disorder is 
arrested much easier; but, to cure the malady, there is a constitution 
to renovate and a virus to destroy. Is it in the power of medicine to 
restore the health and strength, which have been underfed, sapped by a 
foul atmosphere, and exhausted by overwork? Tonics may prop up or 
stimulate for a time; but the drunkard and the opium-eater, among 
human beings, can inform us that the potency of the best-selected and 
the choicest drugs, most judiciously prescribed and carefully prepared, is 
indeed very limited. What, then, can be hoped for in an animal whose 
treatment is generally an affair of pounds, shillings, and pence? Sul- 
phate of copper or of iron, oak-bark, Cayenne pepper, and cantharides, 
probably, are the chief medicines the practitioner will give. With such 
the horse may be patched up; it may even return to work. But at what 
arisk! It carries about the seeds of a disorder contagious to the human 
species, and in man even more terrible than in the quadruped. Is it 
lawful, is it right, to save an avaricious master the chance of a few shil- 
lings, and to incur the risk of poisoning an innocent person? The 
author thinks not. Therefore he will give no directions how to arrest 
the progress of farcy. The horse, once contaminated, is, indeed, very 
rarely or never cured. The animal, after the veterinary surgeon has 
shaken hands with the proprietor and departed, too often bears about 
an enlarged limb, which impedes its utility, and, at any period, may 
break forth again with more than the virulence of the original affection. 
A GENTLEMAN’S SERVANT OUT OF PLACE. 
