590 
* 
THE VETERINARIAN, OCTOBER 1, 1847. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — Cicero. 
The science of Hygiene, when applied to horses, presents to us 
two different objects : one being the preservation of health ; the 
other, the attainment of condition. Abstract health is one thing ; 
and what we call condition is another. A horse may be in health 
without being in condition ; though he can hardly be said to be in 
condition if he be out of health. , Either condition is another kind 
of health, or it is a superlative degree of health : a sort of ne plus 
ultra of that state. It is not our intention here to enter at all into 
the important subject of condition ; but simply to make a few ob- 
servations on the preservation or maintenance of health, or, what 
in stable economy amounts to the same thing, the prevention of 
disease. 
Drawing his breath exclusively through his nostrils, and that 
breath passing directly into capacious cavities and canals lined 
by a delicate membrane exquisitely sensitive in the cognizance of 
of odours of all kinds, and particularly obnoxious to offensive ones, 
the horse in his native plains and forests seeks the freest and purest 
air. Need we wonder, then, that when he comes to be fastened up 
in a stable, with many others besides himself, for several hours 
together, day and night, that, unless means be taken to furnish him 
with a renewed supply of fresh air, he lose his wonted good health, 
and fall into disease! No person was better convinced of this fact 
than the late Professor Coleman ; and this it was that led him to 
make that thorough reform in the ventilation of the stables of our 
cavalry which has been followed by such manifestly beneficial 
results. 
While every attention, however, has been given to ventilation, 
whereof the ostensible object has been to give exit to the respired 
and consequently heated and impure air, and full admission to 
such as was cool and free from such impurities, the sources whence 
the atmosphere of the stable has been rendered impure or conta- 
