STOMACH-STAGGERS. 
69 
stage. In this disorder, as may well be supposed, medicine 
will have but little effect, from the gorged condition of the 
stomach. Some veterinary surgeons recommend bleeding; 
but we have never found this attended with any beneficial 
effects, as what must naturally debilitate the system can 
hardly be expected to aid the action of the stomach. 
Probably the safest plan is to allow nature to work its own 
cure, by abstaining from giving food. But as we know 
of no certain remedy for this disease, we should carefully 
guard against promoting it. 
It is no uncommon occurrence for farmers and others 
keeping a number of horses to lose several of them within 
very short periods of each other with this malady, from 
which an opinion prevails with many that the staggers is 
contagious. Nothing can be more erroneous than this belief, 
as it is quite certain that the complaint is induced by bad 
stable management, or by feeding the horse with unwhole¬ 
some food, or in the horse feeding too voraciously, as already 
mentioned. This disease is more common with old horses 
than others. We would strongly recommend the owners of 
horses to give some attention to the following :—Too much 
food given at one time after long fasting or hard work, and 
neglecting to give the animal water, is almost certain to 
produce the staggers. The hours of labour should be for 
limited spaces of time, with proper intervals of rest allowed, 
and the horse regularly fed during these intervals. Every 
man must have felt the effects of being without dinner for 
two or three hours beyond his accustomed time. Exhaus¬ 
tion is almost certain to follow, which is produced by the 
gastric juice acting upon the coating of an empty stomach. 
From five to six hours are the intervals between the meals 
of a labouring man ; and with a horse that is worked no 
longer time should be allowed to elapse without feeding and 
