566 
VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE — EMPIRICISM 
whom Sebille in despair hastened to fetch, hoping that he might 
bring some antidote to the place to which he had sent his deadly 
poison, arrived, a third had ceased to live. 
Lantier said, that he had made Sebille carry home with him 
a powder for the very purpose of calming this apparent fever in 
the horses, and which sometimes followed the administration of 
the drink. What was this powder? It will puzzle the most 
scientific practitioner to say what that powder was. Well! It 
was the Lieutenant's powder*, What think you, veterinarians, 
would you have guessed at it ? 
Sebille then began to think of commencing an action against 
Lantier for the loss of his horses ; and MM. Jacquemard and 
Lebeau were instructed very carefully to examine the carcasses. 
The skin being raised, the parietes of the chest were deeplv infil- 
tered with blood. A great quantity of sero-sanguinolent fluid was 
found in the thoracic cavity; the lungs were gorged with black 
blood, and their substance formed a gangrenous and putrid mass. 
The pleurae were red, with considerable adhesions to the sides and 
the diaphragm; and there was a great quantity of false mem¬ 
brane, of a brown colour. The pericardium was filled with a 
fluid of a deep red colour; the cavities of the heart were empty. 
The viscera of the abdomen presented nothing particular; in¬ 
deed, there was no trace of irritation. 
Of the other three horses, Messrs. Jacquemard and Lebeau 
did not hesitate to declare that one of them would be broken- 
winded, and the value of the remaining two w T as materially 
diminished. 
When the cause was heard, the cure declared that he had 
treated numerous animals in the same way during six-and-thirty 
years, and had never before met with any accident of the kind. 
He affirmed that he could readily detect the nature of every 
disease under which a horse might labour by an inspection of 
the colour of the hair; and he brought forward several witnesses 
who declared that they had derived benefit from his treatment 
of them. The mayor of the commune trembled and hesitated 
* Solleysei (the hero—the oracle of the Cure of the Great Parish, and of 
some of the present day, wise enough in their own estimation, but whose 
actual science may be very fairly judged of by their fondness for such non¬ 
sense) describes the lieutenant’s powder as composed of sage, carduus 
benedicius, long birthwort, speedwell, liquorice, elecampane, misletoe, 
zedoary, gentian, bay-berries, aniseseeds, cummin seeds, angelica, devil’s 
bit, china root, mallows, lungwort, and coltsfoot. There is a great deal of 
ceremony about the mixing of these strange ingredients; but the result of 
the whole is, a powder “ which will prevent and stop the course of many 
diseases; and if a man would preserve his horse from any indispositions 
which might befall him, he would give him every third month an ounce and 
a half of this powder.” Y. 
