144 
ON FARCY. 
Bi/M. II AMO NT, Founder and Director of the Veterinary School 
at Ahou-Zahed, ^ 
[Continued from p.77, and concluded.] 
The nature of Farcy being known, we may certainly, for a 
while at least, diminish or destroy all innate predisposition to it. 
It remains, then, to determine whence we may obtain stallions 
on which our hope of accomplishing this may be founded. Farcy 
having been considered as peculiar to cold and wet countries, 
some have thought of searching for them in warm climates. 
Arab horses have been bought at great expence either in Egypt 
or in Syria; but these stallions, so beautiful and so vigorous, 
have not answered the expectations of the governments that pur¬ 
chased them. An Egyptian asked one of us, whether, by crossing 
the females of a hot country with males from a cold one their 
progeny might not be preserved from farcy ? Animals of a moun¬ 
tain breed, fed on animal and vegetable diet, crossed wdth those 
of the plains, ought to produce a race that had little disposition 
to farcy: but the influence of locality, incessantly acting on the 
animal economy, would render it necessary to have frequent 
recourse to these crossings; and then, this system being uni¬ 
versally pursued, and a different mode of feeding adopted, the 
malady of which we are treating might perhaps be caused entirely 
to disappear. This is not an affection that is likely to give way 
to medicine, although every one has his favourite mode of treat¬ 
ment, and there are few drugs the power of which has not been 
tried, and none of them with any satisfactory result. Some of 
the incendiary corrosive substances that have been given have 
often strangely aggravated the evil. Vitet advised the employ¬ 
ment of fumigations of orpiment, and water saturated with white 
arsenic. Lafosse had recourse to emollients and discutients, 
according to the state of the farcy tumours. Chabert prescribed 
sudorifics and diaphoretic antimony. Gohier, professor of the 
school of Lyons, used decoctions of hemlock. A French veteri¬ 
nary surgeon, formerly professor of the school of Milan, cured^ 
many cases of farcy by the use of large doses of sulphur. While 
one of us was at Alfort, the Professor of Pathology, M. Barthe- 
lemy, sen., administered Kermes mineral in very large doses, and 
also cured many horses by this mode of treatment. These iso¬ 
lated cures, however, have not changed the general opinion. It 
is not the surp'eon who records the case that has cured the far- 
^ O 
cied horse : it is not the effect of the medicines that have been 
employed : it is the work of nature alone. 
