4 
MR. YOUATt’s veterinary LECTURES. 
rious, for few things are so indigestible as the husk of the wheat. 
In one of our largest breweries it broke out not many years ago as a 
kind of pest, and more than twenty horses perished in a very short 
time. The principals were dissatisfied, and they applied to another 
veterinary surgeon, who traced the malady to the inordinate use of 
dry bran, and which had not been long introduced into the stables. 
He forbade the use of the bran except in the form of a mash, in 
which the cortical portion of the wheat was somewhat macerated 
and softened, and the plague was immediately stayed. 
The Farmef^s Horse. —The farmer also used to send his horses 
out early in the morning, and keep them at plough for six or 
eight hours; and then they were brought home, and suffered to 
overgorge themselves, and many of them were attacked by stag¬ 
gers and died: or, if the evil did not proceed quite to this ex¬ 
tent, the farmer’s horse was notoriously subject to fits of heavi¬ 
ness, dulness, sleepiness; he had half-attacks of staggers: and 
then ensued another consequence, unsuspected at the time, but 
too prevalent among them—he became blind. The farmer was 
notorious for having more blind horses in his stable than any 
other person, except perhaps the postmaster: and it was a pe¬ 
culiar kind of blindness to which these horses were subject— 
amaurosis—glass-eye, palsy of the optic nerve. This nerve, as 
it winds its course across the crura cerebri, both before and after 
its apparent decussation, is particularly exposed to pressure when 
there is any determination of blood to the brain; hence in the 
human being a peculiar dizziness, an indistinctness of vision, an 
illusory motion of surrounding objects, or the creation of a thou¬ 
sand imaginary ones, constitute the very essence of vertigo, 
and are some of the earliest and truest warnings of the approach 
of more serious cerebral affection. 
French Account of the Connexion of Amaurosis with Staggers .— 
The Recueil de Medecine Veterinaire for June 1828 contains 
some interestins: cases of amaurosis followins; the successful 
O _ O ^ 
treatment of apoplexy. They are related by M. Berger Perriere. 
He tells us that the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of Bourgoin 
are very poor, and their horses ill-fed. The horses are worked 
without food from an early period of the morning to night-fall, 
and then turned into a meadow until ten or eleven o’clock. They 
are afterwards led to the stable for a few hours’ rest, and at three 
or four in the morning are again turned out to pick up sufficient 
sustenance for the day; and this vicious system is pursued 
during every change of season, and however severe may be the 
labour exacted. The consequence is, that staggers is very pre¬ 
valent there and may almost be considered as an epizootic. 
M. B. P. visited two horses that had staggers. They were 
