AIR IN THE HEART OF A HORSE. 
65 
seases, although they may be the cause of them when interfering 
with acting parts. When separate from them, which veterinary 
science can always detect, I would not refuse a good hunter 
merely because an excrescence, generated of the same matter 
with the bone itself, had grown out, and which, in the case of 
splents, is so often absorbed — proved by the fact of old horses 
being seldom seen to have them. 
Calais, Dec. 22d, 1836. 
AIR IN THE HEART OF A HORSE. 
By Mr. Percivall, M.R.C.S., F.S. Is t Life Guards. 
My dear Youatt, 
Since some allusions have been made in public, and some in- 
uendoes thrown out in private, at me, touching the management 
of The Veterinarian, it may be as well for me thus publicly 
to state, in confirmation of what has already appeared from you, 
that for some years past I have ceased to take any part whatever 
in the management, or participate in the proprietorship, of the 
Journal. Indeed, as you full well know, and as I ought to be 
ashamed to confess, my contributions to it for this year or two 
past have been too scarce and insignificant even to claim a right 
to have my name inserted in the list of “ Collaborateurs.” How- 
ever, I hope to amend my manners, and to still contribute my 
occasional mite to the science I am getting my living by ; and, 
as some sort of earnest thereof, I send you the following account 
of what, to me, is an occurrence perfectly novel. 
A horse, three years old, was taken ill after the ordinary mode 
in which a febrile catarrhal attack commences : he was off his 
feed ; dull and dejected ; and his pulse was increased to about 55. 
He took three drachms of aloes, lived upon a bran diet, and was 
kept quiet in his stall. The day following he was removed from 
his stable into a box ; but nothing farther was done, the medicine 
appearing to be about acting on the bowels. The morning of 
the third day he purged. Water-gruel was now substituted for 
water for his drink. He ate his hay, and appeared to be doing 
well. His pulse continued between 55 and 60, but was grown 
so feeble at the jaw, that more than ordinary attention was re- 
quired to perceive the pulsations of the artery. I saw him alive, 
for the last time, at one o’clock on this, the third day. At five 
o’clock p.m. he had drunk a pailful of his gruel, and still ap- 
peared going on well. At half-past eight p.m. he was found 
VOL. X. K 
