NEW VIEWS REGARDING ROARERS. 
157 
under an intense inflammation of the mucous membrane lining 
the air-passages of the head and throat, accompanied by that in- 
ordinate flux of mucus or pus from the nostrils which we occa- 
sionally see under aggravated circumstances in catarrh or dis- 
temper ; perhaps a protracted case, but yet that had run itself 
perfectly clean, leaving behind it only those tortuous cavities in 
the turbinated bones very considerably and permanently dilated, 
owing to the long retention of viscid mucus in prodigious quan- 
tity. 
If this reasoning is sound, such cases have been a more fruit- 
ful source of roarers than the horse-world has ever dreamed of. 
I do not intend to weaken my position on this subject, by al- 
lowing such a mistake to go abroad, as contending that it is the 
cause , the sole cause, or any such extreme. I am too well ac- 
quainted with the complicated mechanism of the larynx to be 
unmindful of its tendency to this disease amid the outrages of 
domestication. I only argue that it is one , and not the least 
either in importance or frequency ; and I flatter myself nothing 
less than its leading eventually to a radical cure of many of the 
hitherto supposed incurable cases of roaring. 
It must be remembered, that there are some cases which will 
for ever baffle us in treatment. I have occasionally ridden some 
roarers, where my ears have proved as good stethoscopes as were 
ever made by man, in which I have been perfectly convinced 
that the noise issued from obstructed bronchi within the lungs 
themselves. 
With reference to general causes, great stress has been laid 
by Mr. Sewell and others upon the mechanical injury inflicted 
upon the passages of the throat by tight reining. 1 have not the 
hardihood to deny its bad tendency ; but my impression is, that 
it does not contribute a tithe-part in comparison to colds and sore 
throats. This opinion is founded on the facts of the many colts I 
have known to have become roarers before they have been surren- 
dered up to the colt-breaker ; and more especially young racing - 
horses , particularly after the distemper, as these turf-men term it, 
has been rife in their stables. Now these animals had never been 
outraged by the harness-collar; and I have not yet heard that 
the training people are guilty of tight reining, as happens to com- 
mon horses. 
I have already hinted, in the early part of this paper, that mo- 
dern veterinarins, for a series of years, have been too much accus- 
tomed to be absorbed by the forcible impressions made upon 
them by those awful morbid specimens occasionally met with at 
the slaughter-houses, of strictures in and about the throat. Now, 
A n my humble opinion, the mistake consists in regarding these 
