290 
HORSE CAUSE. 
the fuel ; and, Mr. Tolner—no horseman—believes this, and 
commences his action. Common sense, we should have thought, 
would have told him, that if the bleeding had any effect, it was 
to mitigate the intensity of the inflammation that followed. 
Inflamed lungs supervened, and then Mr. Rogers ordered the 
mare, and the stable, in which were two other horses, to be kept 
close and warm. That the mare died from the consequence of 
inflammation, “ over-congestion of blood in the lungs,” is pro¬ 
bable. We have the united testimony of Mr. Coleman and Mr. 
Jumpson to prove it; but when did the inflammation commence ? 
The plaintiff’s adviser had not wit enough to attend to this im¬ 
portant point. Most certainly not, when, after the bleeding, she 
was ordered to be kept w 7 arm. After inflammatiQn, pure inflam¬ 
mation of the lungs had existed ten days, the lungs would have 
been gangrenous . Congestion is the consequence of recent in¬ 
flammation rapidly running its course. It was not attempted to 
be proved, and what indeed could not have been proved, that 
inflammation of the lungs was the primary disease. 
Suppose Mr. Rogers fancied something like catarrh coming 
on, would he do wrong in clothing warmly ? or w r ould he be al¬ 
ways wrong in keeping the stable warm ? Mr. Rogers intended 
to physic the mare : he did physic her. Mr. Jumpson speaks of 
the “ excessive purging.” Is it w T rong practice to keep the stable 
warm while a horse is under physic, and especially when super¬ 
purgation occurs ? Mr. Jumpson says that “the intestines were 
slightly inflamed.” Slight inflammation does not usually follow 
“ excessive purging.” Was it not a complicated case from the 
beginning ? and might not inflammation of the intestines succeed 
to catarrh or bronchitis, and inflammation of the lungs to that of 
the intestines ? Mr. Rogers, then, might not be guilty of any 
mal-practice ; or, at the worst, might not have been more mis¬ 
taken in the opinion w r hich he formed of the case, and the course 
which he pursued, than the most careful of us must occasionally 
be, when our patients can neither tell us the seat nor the degree 
* ; # * 
of pain. 
We are not advocating the cause of Mr. Rogers, who has not 
