378 
EFFECTS OF MEDICINE ON HORSES. 
was made the subject of experiment, with a view of settling the 
question. For the first five days half an ounce of the copper 
was exhibited daily, at the expiration of which time the animal 
beginning to loathe his food, and there being some acceleration 
of the pulse, the dose was reduced to three drachms daily. In 
two days more the appetite had become so bad that the discon- 
tinuance of the medicine for a day became compulsory. On 
the day after — being the ninth from the commencement — 
the faeces proved to be <c a little softened half an ounce of the 
copper given. Tenth and eleventh days, the dose was increased 
to an ounce ; and on the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and 
fifteenth days, ounce-doses were administered three times each 
day, without again altering the natural state of the faeces. 
The sulphate of copper is not to be classed among either 
cathartics or laxatives. In such large doses as an ounce, it 
speedily creates nausea and loathing of food ; and febrile dis- 
order followed in many, perhaps most, instances by griping 
pains and diarrhoea: and these disturbances, should the medicine 
be continued, end in death. Half-ounce doses, persevered in for 
any length of time, will often produce the same effects. But in 
one or two-drachm doses, and especially in the form of solution — 
a formula much lauded by Professor Sewell — the sulphate of 
copper may be exhibited with safety, and in some disorders with 
advantage. To deny that its administration has been attended 
with benefit in glanders and in farcy, would be to run in the face 
of the experience of ages, and of all our professional forefathers’ 
observation and assertion. We have neither right nor reason for 
saying that blue vitriol formed an useless or ineffectual constituent 
of their “ farcy balls.” My father’s farcy ball — and my father, 
in those days, was assisted in his practice by Professor Coleman 
* — was composed of cupri sulphatis 3\j> antimon. potassio tartrat. 
3iij, terebinth, vulgaris q. s. ut fiat bol., and this ball was given 
when no experiment was making in every case of farcy that oc- 
curred, and was considered, in many of them, to cure the patients. 
That sulphate of copper possesses any specific powers over either 
farcy or glanders, I, for my own part, scruple not to deny ; al- 
though I admit I am ready to believe that, of many cases of farcy, 
and of some even of glanders, it has, in its operation on the sys- 
tem, assisted in the cure. As a tonic , copper would give tone and 
vigour to the constitution ; and might, where there was a natural 
tendency to counteract or throw off any morbific poison, aid the 
constitutional powers in their salutiferous operations. 
As an astringent, it would check or repress the secretions of 
mucous and ulcerous surfaces. The turpentine combined with it 
