174 
THE VETERINARY ART IN INDIA. 
decay, which no after moderation or precaution can repair ; for 
every stimulus is a forced advance on the scale of excitability, 
and induces one yet stronger, until a premature old age is the result. 
Thus a person may die of age or decay, as is the case with 
drunkards, and in hot climates, where the stimulus is excessive, 
at the age of fifty or sixty years ; while in a more moderate one 
the same effects are not produced till seventy or eighty. 
Thus it is with domesticated animals : every deviation from 
nature is attended with a proportional destruction of one principle 
or the other, and every one will allow, that an animal formed 
for activity, when under restraint, irregularly exercised, and art 
employed to prepare his food, becomes a deviation from nature ; 
hence the many diseases to which the horse is exposed. 
If, therefore, the above statement is true, every general dis- 
ease must arise from these two causes only,' — either excess of 
stimulus destroying or exhausting the excitability of the system, 
or the stimulus, not being sufficient, inducing an accumulation of 
excitability, which will, of course, produce a set of diseases of an 
opposite nature to the former : and every disease of a class, how- 
ever various may be the forms which it may assume, is cured by 
a similar treatment, or medicine of the same class, differing 
more in proportion than in property. 
In opposite climates, opposite diseases must predominate : 
thus in cold climates there is generally a want of stimulus from 
the absence of heat, and diseases occasioned by excess of excita- 
bility will prevail, while, from the excess of heat in the tropics, 
diseases arising from exhausted irratibility must prevail, also the 
diseases of the aged must in almost every instance be those of ex- 
haustion, as the excitability with them must, by the natural pro- 
gress of life, be nearly consumed. In these cases, a stronger stimulus 
will generally rouse the deadened excitability to an increased action, 
by which it may be secreted in larger quantities ; but the^action 
of the system being once increased, the stimulus must be lessened 
to something below what the object has been accustomed to, 
by which the property is allowed to accumulate, w r hile by a 
continued stimulus it would be exhausted. This is precisely 
the treatment required in all cases of exhaustion, and in this 
country I have found that mode to be particularly successful in 
several cases, even when immediate death was expected. As an 
example of this kind, I shall state the following case. — The 
animal was seized with coldness of the extremities, became very 
dull, and had scarcely any animation left. In two or three hours he 
was seized with general convulsion, all his joints were strongly 
contracted, and his jaw nearly locked. At this period scarcely 
any heat could be felt on any part of the body, although several 
farriers had been employed from the commencement in rubbing 
