DIABETES IN HORSES. 
79 
a mild dose of physic before putting him to exercise, or on corn. It 
seems to prevent relapse. Let the patient always have as much 
water as he pleases ; but give it six times a day, and warm it a 
little. 
When the horse must work, — and in many mild cases the owner 
will not spare him — he must get the same medicine. His food, in 
this case, must consist of a large allowance of beans, and if the hay 
or oats are bad, the bad article must be entirely withheld. Work- 
ing, however, is so much against a cure, that the practitioner should 
as often as possible get the patient laid up. At work, he will be 
one day well and another day worse ; and it will be many days, 
perhaps weeks, ere he is quite right. 
Lime-water, bean-flour, pea-flour, chalk, and clay, are often used 
to arrest diabetes. Mr. Gloag, of the 10th Hussars, used to give the 
cavalry horses water in which hot iron had been quenched. He 
found it a simple and frequently an efficacious remedy against dia- 
betes. All these, however, are quite useless when the disease is 
severe. 
Febrile or Bronchitic Diabetes. 
Symptoms . — The horse is dull, his appetite defective, pulse quick 
and hard, mouth hot, eyes and nostrils red, and his breathing 
rather quicker than it ought to be. He urinates as often, and as 
much, as in simple diabetes ; and his thirst is equally unquenchable. 
After a day or two it is observed that he does not lie down at night. 
The subsequent symptoms are just those of bronchitis in combina- 
tion with diabetes. 
Cause . — It frequently happens that the horse is dull, evidently 
unwell, for some days before he has either fever or diabetes ; and 
I am much disposed to believe that the bronchitis is the cause of 
the fever, but I am in doubt which is the cause of the diabetes. 
Perhaps it is neither, for we often see both proceeding even to 
death without any diabetes. The groom sometimes declares that 
the horse was well enough till he took the staling-evil. But I have, 
again and again, found the patient ill with bronchitis for several 
days before diabetes commenced. For awhile I thought that the 
diabetes might possibly be the cause of bronchitis and fever ; and, 
on that supposition, I endeavoured to avert the diabetes as the 
cause of all the mischief ; but the result proved the error. 
After much attention to the subject, I have to confess, that I 
have not discovered the cause. It may be produced by the causes 
which produce the bronchitis ; or it may be the result of a parti- 
cular state of blood, that state arising from bronchitis, or some 
other disease of the lungs. I can say no more about it. Discovery 
