228 
DARVILL ON THE CAKE, TREATMENT, 
for them to go into training, and also, occasionally, while they 
are actually in training . In fact there appears to be (and we 
are very far from wishing to gainsay the fact) a great deal to be 
done in conditioning the animal by physic : physic would seem 
to be the alpha and omega of training, and to be quite as ser¬ 
viceable to the Newmarket groom as to the practising veterina¬ 
rian : at the same time this dosing regimen may be carried too 
far ; and it is notorious enough that on occasions a great deal of 
danger and harm has resulted from its indiscriminate adoption. 
Our author appears to be alive to some of these dangers, and 
accordingly has furnished the groom with the following precau¬ 
tions :— 
“ By way of caution to grooms, and with a view to prevent them in 
future from falling into similar errors, I will here state different causes from 
which I have known horses occasionally die in physic. I have already ob¬ 
served that there are some horses mnchiinoreeasily purged than others; but 
the horse which now and then leads the groom astray, is the one of a craving 
constitution. A groom generally judges of the constitution of a horse from 
the size of his carcass and width of his loins, as also from the manner in 
which he feeds, and from the work he takes in training. From these points 
he will be able to form a tolerably just idea. When a groom was about 
physicking a strong, craving, large carcassed horse, his practice was 
thence to regulate the quantity of aloes the dose was to contain, which, 
on such occasions, would most likely be from nine to ten drachms of 
Barbadoes aloes; and it has frequently happened, that a dose of physic of 
this strength, has had no effect whatever in purging a horse of a strong 
constitution, when in training, if suck a dose of physic had been given 
to a horse in common use, it would have more than purged him sufficiently; 
it would, in all probability, have purged him to death. It also occurs at 
times, that a horse in training is purged for too long a period, or perhaps 
till he dies, and from the following cause. The groom having given him 
a dose of physic, such as I have described, and finding it to have produced 
little or no effect on the horse after a proper interval of time, considers it 
necessary to give the horse another dose; and in making up this second 
dose, he concludes it will be necessary to add a larger portion of aloes, 
- perhaps two or three drachms more than was contained in the first. Nor 
is this a very unreasonable conclusion for a man to make who is un¬ 
acquainted with the properties of medicine. It is, in consequence of this 
treatment, that a groom has now and then been so unfortunate as to have a 
horse die in physic, which arises from his ignorance of the effect of the 
aloes on the constitution when the quantity is increased beyond that 
which is generally given at one time, to purge such a horse. When the 
aloes, being increased to the extent abovementioned, begin to operate, 
the action is sometimes continued in proportion to the quantity given; and 
by stimulating so large a surface as that of the intestines of the horse for 
so great a length of time, and to such excess, the powers and constitution 
are not able to support it. The general consequence is, great debility and 
irritation, sometimes followed by inflammation of the bowels, which oc¬ 
casions the death of the horse. This has at times occurred to some 
grooms, from their having relied too much on the power of medicine 
alone to purge a strong horse, and merely preparing him for his physic in 
the usual w ay, by giving him mashes the day previous, w ith a view to relax 
the bowels, and then the first thing on the follow ing morning administering 
