78 AN ESSAY ON THE CONDITION OF HORSES, &c. 
If an extremely fat man is attacked with fever, his chances 
against recovery are as two to one in comparison with a lean 
man. If he breaks his leg, his case is by far more critical than 
that of the thin man with the same extent of injury. 
The fact is simply this, — all may go well with the fat man, while 
nothing occurs to suddenly agitate his arterial system. Just so 
with a horse out of Condition. While he is not heated, and so 
long as his weak blood is not hurried through his soft frame be- 
yond a certain ratio, all is right ; but the very first act of exertion 
has a tendency to disturb the balance of the circulation, by caus- 
ing an accumulation and congestion of blood in the lungs, in the 
manner I have before described. 
With regard to the defective quality of the blood in these cases, 
I repeat, that it is not disease, but weakness of some of its com- 
ponent parts, which are more particularly essential in the formation 
of the contracting fibre. Hence arises that langour and muscular 
debility so often evinced by the horse in riding him a journey 
when out of Condition. 
When I reflect on the notorious fact, that the worn-down, dis- 
eased £15 post-horse, from his muscles being hard, and the blood 
which circulates in his attenuated frame being rich and strong 
in quality, is twice as effective as another horse in the prime of 
life, sound, and in the market worth £100, whose muscles are 
soft, and whose vessels are distended with weak blood, it fixes in 
my mind a conviction, that the act of working horses when out 
of Condition, without a sufficient preparation, not only lays the 
foundation for the worst diseases to which the animal is liable, 
but has also the effect of misleading men’s judgment when 
estimating the value of their horse, as the performances of the 
animal, under such circumstances, form no criterion of his real 
merit. 
I could enumerate hundreds of instances that have occurred 
within my own observation, of horses having been given away 
by their owners for petty sums, by no means equivalent to their 
value, under a supposition that they were bad horses, when by 
the aid of a little management they have afterwards proved last- 
ing specimens of perfection. I have known this mistake happen 
to men famed for their judgment in horses; but among those 
who are not familiar with the horse, these sacrifices occur daily. 
It now remains to be shewn, what plan of preparation is neces- 
sary to enable a horse to do his work with ease to himself and 
pleasure to his owner, and which may have the effect, upon the 
animal being disencumbered, of eliciting powers that otherwise 
might have remained latent. 
[This subject will be resumed at a future period.] 
