VETERINARY SCHOOL AT ALFORT. 383 
stantial food to compensate for the privations of the winter season ; 
changes which are too rapid under our faulty system of manage- 
ment, and which cause many serious diseases. 
The horse is of all animals the most frequent victim of our abuse 
of power. Associated with men of almost all conditions, he is 
valued only for the work that he performs. 
But, among the causes of the disease under which we see the 
horse suffer, the most influential, and invariably dangerous, is over- 
work. Experience daily teaches this in our large populations. 
There, in the display of great industry, and a trade of which com- 
petition is the essence, the horse is but an instrument, and is com- 
pelled to labour long, hard, and with dispatch, in order to ob- 
tain the greatest profit. The consequence of this usage, so re- 
gardless of the welfare of our animals, is the rapid ruin of health. 
The work which we require from our animals is, in fact, what 
we ought to repay with the greatest possible tenderness and care. 
More artificial, so to say, than any other, it requires in the 
animal from which it is obtained the most perfect harmony of 
strength, the most complete solidity of organs, and the most absolute 
integrity of the functions ; all which conditions cannot exist unless 
repose and diet, administered with intelligence, shall sufficiently 
compensate for the enormous expenditure of animal power that 
is required. 
The forgetfulness of those laws requisite for the maintenance of 
health, of which we are too often guilty, is the cause of a great 
number of the diseases which are so destructive to our horses. 
Placed in conditions most contrary to the laws of nature, the horse, 
worked without regard to strength, becomes prematurely exhausted 
by the very excess of the activity of his organs; and when once 
the equilibrium of his organization is destroyed, life becomes gra- 
dually extinguished in him, and powerless to animate a machine 
whose worn-out powers can no longer act, otherwise the conse- 
quence of perverted nutrition causes the animal matter to undergo 
a mysterious and fatal transformation. 
Then do these fatal germs which are contained in the exhausted 
organs become developed. They sap the foundations of life, and, 
endowed with a devastating activity, extend themselves through- 
out the whole frame, and powerfully exercise their fatal influence. 
Then appear those contagious diseases which the credulous of 
ancient times attributed to the spirit of evil, and which have their 
origin in ill-treatment, or, in other words, in the abuse of the 
things confided to our care by the great Creator. 
May a good system of agriculture furnish us with the means of 
a varied and sufficient allowance of food to the animals ; and that 
general competence which ought to be produced by the present 
