AN ESSAY ON THE CONDITION OF HORSES, &C. 75 
of fever and inflammation of the lungs as would destroy the ani- 
mal in a few days or a week, unless arrested by active treatment. 
The horse is supposed to have taken cold, when in truth he has 
met his death by an act of exertion which, to a horse in Con- 
dition would have been only exercise. Horses in this manner 
out of Condition are in good health and spirits, if kept without 
work, but are soon unwell when forced to work. A young horse 
that has been fed for several months in the way I have de- 
scribed, and then required to do an ordinary day’s work, is la- 
bouring under every possible disadvantage that can be imagined. 
Not only are his muscles soft, flabby, and out of tone from the 
want of practice, but each muscle, and every fibre of it, is en- 
compassed and clogged with a superfluous weight — a layer of 
cellular structure, which is deposited and kept there by his mode 
of living, and this superfluity pervades the whole frame. 
The oppression falls the most heavily on the muscles con- 
nected with respiration, and on the heart, which is itself a mus- 
cle. This organ, I have invariably found on the dissection of 
such horses, is encumbered more in proportion than the other 
parts. 
In addition to the oppressed state of the muscular system, the 
whole bloodvessel-system is overcharged, and, what is worse 
than all, with weak blood. If the quantum were the only fault, 
the remedy would be immediate by the lancet: but it is materi- 
ally defective in quality; and, as all parts proceed from the 
blood, it follows that even the contracting fibres themselves of 
the oppressed muscles are deficient in strength and vigour. 
I have been led to an investigation of the quality of the blood 
of horses, in various degrees of condition, from a difficulty I have 
often met with in practice to account for cases of muscular de- 
bility, and in which subjects I have had every reason to believe 
there existed no defect in their solids. 
In the course of experiments I have ascertained that there is 
not only a great variation in the relative proportions of the seve- 
ral parts of the blood, according to the degree of Condition in the 
horse, but a most material difference in the quality of certain 
parts of it, and which I intend at a future opportunity more 
fully to point out. 
But to return to the oppressed state of the muscular frame. 
The animal is called upon to gallop at speed, although perhaps 
only for a short distance. The circulation of the blood is accele- 
rated in consequence ; the heart beats with rapidity ; the blood, in 
the same proportion and with the same velocity, is sent into the 
lungs, and the muscles of respiration are as suddenly required to 
expand the chest. They are, perhaps, equal to this at the first 
