154 
THE EFFECT OF TOBACCO. 
Telegraph coach, with scarcely a leg to stand upon, or, to appear¬ 
ance, any muscular power left. “ Will you never draft the old 
Spanish stallion V’ was my frequent question to his owner. ‘‘There 
is no end to him, I believe,” was the answer. His toughness 
was alone attributable to his being entire, for, in other respects, 
he was in a form quite opposite to that which denotes lasting pro¬ 
perties. 
Tobacco:—The anecdote told by Mr. J. W. Goodwin,and related 
in your February number of this year, reminds me of one, touching 
the effect of tobacco-smoke, told me by the late Mr. Chute, master 
of the Vine hounds. Finding his hunter tired at the end of a severe 
run, he rode to the house of a farmer, and asked him to lend him 
his hackney to take him home quickly, as he had a large party to 
dinner that evening. The farmer’s wife was gone to Winchester 
with the hackney, and “What was to be donel” was the question 
asked by the popular old squire, who could have commanded any 
thing the farmer had to assist him. “ Oh,” said the farmer, “ I’ll 
soon put you to rightsso, ordering a lighted pipe to be brought 
him, he applied the mouthpiece of it to the anus of the distressed 
and panting hunter, who, after about a dozen inspirations of the 
fumes proceeding from its contents, was so far refreshed by their 
stimulating quality, as to carry his owner home in due time for 
his dinner-party. I must believe this to be true, from the character 
of the relator of the anecdote. 
I remember reading an interesting paper in your Journal on the 
transmission of some diseases from animals to the human species. 
I was lately told of a melancholy case in corroboration of this fact. 
A groom was riding a glandered horse, and, in tossing up his head in 
his walk, a small portion of the discharge from the animal’s nostril 
alighted in the groom’s eye. He died, glandered, not long after¬ 
wards. I also recollect the recommendation by a Scotch practi¬ 
tioner of the lancet, in preference to the fleam, for bleeding horses. 
It certainly has a more scientific and respectable appearance ; and 
some horses’ tempers are very much ruffled by a stroke of the blood- 
stick, and no wonder. In the hand of a man who knows how to 
use it,—and, if my memory serves me, the Scotchman says, “ those 
who do not should go back to school and learn,”—I would certainly 
give it the preference over the fleam, although a horse I sold for 280 
guineas was killed, in Leicestershire, by being bled with a lancet 
which had not a shoulder to it, and, we may suppose, in an unskil¬ 
ful hand. He did not survive the puncture more than eight 
minutes. It is a matter for congratulation, however, that the use 
of either lancet or fleam is now very greatly restricted from that of 
former years, and the precious stream is not wasted by buckets full 
as it was wont to be, and without any existing cause. 
