2 
HIPPO-PATHOLOGY. 
a truly exalted and matchless pitch of perfection ; bu t the meas 
we employ to effect all this are productive of unnatural excite- 
ment in his constitution, under the operation of which the proba- 
bility — nay, all but certainty — is, that some part or other of the 
complex animal machinery will give way. As we render the 
hardy plant a tender one, although we augment its growth and 
beauty, by transplanting it from the open air into the hot-house, 
so we transmute the cool, sturdy temperament of the animal into 
a habit of irritability, and one that is both ready and apt, from 
comparatively slight causes, to take on inflammatory action. 
In the first volume of “ Hippo-Pathology,”* it has been my 
endeavour to shew, that the natural or necessary consequence of 
transporting a horse from a cold to a warm situation, and from poor 
to good living, is the engendering of plethora or fulness of blood, 
the tendency of which state of body is to inflammation, or eruption, 
“ or breaking out the seat or site of inflammation or eruption 
being the part locally predisposed, or that happens to have blood 
attracted to it by some cause or other of specific irritation ; which 
part, in horseman’s phraseology, is said to “ fly.” The legs, as 
well on account of their remoteness from the source of circu- 
lation as from their dependent position, are by nature the first to 
“ fly :” hence the proneness of young horses recently stabled to 
swelled legs. Exposed sensitive surfaces, such as the lining 
membrane of the nose, the windpipe, and the lungs, and also the 
delicate texture of the eyes, are likewise much disposed to “ fly” 
or take on inflammatory action, not only on account of their exalted 
degree of innate sensibility and susceptibility, but from the excite- 
ment they are especially subjected to in the heated and contami- 
nated atmosphere of the stable. We have only to extend the 
same train of reasoning to explain upon general principles the pro- 
duction of grease and farcy, catarrh, strangles, roaring, glanders, 
pneumonia, and ophthalmia ; which, collectively, may be said to 
constitute the catalogue of disorders of young fresh-stabled horses. 
The adult and working period of the horse’s lifetime is that in 
which, though seasoned and inured to his new domicile, he is 
still the occasional subject of disease ; but his disorders have now 
become such as arise either from want or irregularity of exercise, 
or excess of labour, rather than from heat of stable or stimulating 
diet. Plethora, it is true, is manifest in his system ; but the parts 
which in the young animal were too weak to resist its influence, 
have now gained strength, and no longer “fly” as heretofore: 
internal parts and organs, and particularly such as receive much 
blood, are ruow more likely to fail than those that are external and 
Already published by Messrs. Longman. 
