NEW VIEWS REGARDING ROARERS. 
153 
rated from moveable cartilages into a rigid bony box ; sometimes 
a portion of the long flexible tube, the trachea, is so permanently 
diminished in its calibre as to afford only half the natural avenue 
for the passage of the vital air, occasioned either by an adventi- 
tious internal ring, or a band of organized lymph thrown across 
some part of the passage : at other times a perfect atrophy, ab- 
sorption, or palsy of all the powerful muscles on one side or other 
of the larynx (by the by, of itself alone a study to the inquiring 
pathologist as an isolated fact). 
Now, in the teeth of these facts, you will be surprised at my 
asserting that there is much that is illusory. Not wishing, how- 
ever, to be misunderstood, I readily admit, that any horse exhi- 
biting on dissection either of those organic diseases must, of 
necessity, have been a confirmed roarer. But the delusion con- 
sists in this, the supposition that in the majority of roarers the 
mechanical obstruction resides in one or other of the respiratory 
passages before named. Many years rolled over my head, and I, 
for one, felt perfectly satisfied with the rationale, except that it 
had not yielded or led to a cure. At length, more especially 
aroused by the contemplation of that mysterious absorption of 
the laryngeal muscles, I took it into my head to hunt for roarers, 
kill and dissect them. This chase cost me a little money, but a 
great deal more expenditure in time : the result was very unlike 
the sportsman’s ; for, although I invariably killed, I seldom or 
never found my game. I allude to the organic lesions before 
named in the throat, but occasionally a large chancre-like ulcer 
upon the epiglottis, and on one occasion several upon the aryte- 
noid cartilages or the rima glottidis. 
I was also much struck witli one solitary case of a general 
attenuation or absorption of the muscular fibres of the diaphragm. 
In several instances I quitted the post-mortem examination, 
blushing with shame that I could discover no morbid lesion 
whatever. 
But chance soon granted me what the renowned locality of 
Smithfield denied. 
One of my employers, an eminent gentleman of the law, re- 
siding in Bed ford-square, requested as a favour that I would see 
a favourite grey horse destroyed within my infirmary. The horse 
I had never seen ; he said he was a roarer, and lame from a bone 
spavin, adding that he killed him for the lameness, but by no 
means for the roaring, as he had done his work in harness for 
years with that complaint. 
Upon sight of my victim, observing his noble muscular appear- 
ance and high condition, I first resolved upon making myself 
vol. x. x 
