EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
291 
In conducting a young horse through this — his ordeal , as we 
may regard it, or passport into public life — considerations such 
as his fitness or condition to undergo the trial, the circum- 
stances under which he is to undergo it, and the chances there 
may be of his safely surmounting it or succumbing to it, will 
naturally occupy the mind of the veterinarian having a charge 
of this description. To persons well acquainted with such 
matters it will not appear a supererogatory or trifling business 
so to place and feed and manage young horses coming out of the 
country into town stables, that, whenever influenza or distemper 
shall — as it surely some day or other will — attack them, they 
may in constitution be found less disposed to take barm from 
the attack than if no such precautionary measures had been 
adopted. Change of air, of food, of water, of habits of life, are 
all for a time operative against the young and growing animal ; 
and if to those alterations its system can be inured before that 
change — which is worse than all — disease , supervenes, so much 
the more likely is the animal frame to withstand the latter 
with impunity, or, in other words, resist its incursions. This is 
what — to borrow a phrase from the French — is called accli- 
matizing the animal ; and a practice it is, in our opinion, re- 
plete with manifold advantage. 
By this process of acclimatization, the several functions of 
the system will be taken less by surprise when the day of trial 
shall arrive, and be less liable to succumb under the attack of 
disease, whatever form, under the guise of influenza or dis- 
temper, it may happen to assume. In fact, having surmounted 
all such minor derangements as altered air, altered food, and 
altered water, may give rise to, the system, already rid, 
by suitable diet and regimen, of any inflammatory diathesis 
to which it might have a tendency, is reduced to the most 
favourable condition it can be, to undergo the ordeal or “ pass- 
port,” as we may call it, into working or public life. 
Before we conclude these observations, we would say a word 
or two about treatment. On the occasion, and in the article 
before referred to, we set our face against blood-letting in in- 
fluenza. We said then, and we would say now, “ that more 
horses, with this disease, have been killed than were ever saved 
