238 MR. youatt’s veterinary lectures. 
membrane, that purging is almost to a certainty followed by 
inflammation, and that inflammation bids defiance to every 
attempt to arrest it. I speak with perfect consideration when I 
affirm that, in the majority of cases, a physic ball would be a 
dose of poison to a horse labouring under pneumonia. 
May I not relax the bowels ? Yes, if I could stop there. In 
my own infirmary, and there we should endeavour to get all 
cases of this description, I may, after the inflammation has evi¬ 
dently a little subsided, venture upon, yet very cautiously, 
small doses of aloes—half a drachm two or three times in the day 
in my fever medicine, and I may quicken it by frequent injec¬ 
tions of warm soap and water; omitting my purgative, however, 
the moment the fseces are becoming pultaceous : but I must be 
assured that the inflammation is subsiding, and I must have 
considerable constipation, or I had better let my purgative alone. 
I have, in an early period of practice, more than once killed a 
horse labouring under inflammation of the lungs with two 
drachms of aloes. 
Sedatives .—If I must not give physic, I must endeavour to 
find some auxiliary to the bleeding, and I have it in the com¬ 
pound of digitalis, nitre^ and emetic tartar, which I have so often 
recommended. The foxglove, a direct and powerful sedative, 
whose principal effect is produced on the heart, lessening the 
number of pulsations, and that by a curious intermission of the 
heart’s action ; while its secondary effect is also a useful one— 
namely, that of a diuretic. Some practitioners prefer the white 
hellebore. It is a powerful nauseant—it lowers the frequency 
and the strength of the pulse, but it does so almost on the prin¬ 
ciple of a blister, by producing a powerful counter-determination 
of blood, and that principally to the brain. By the excitement 
of the brain or its membranes, which it seems to produce, it 
diverts the inflammation, or a portion of it, from its original seat. 
In this respect it is as powerful as we could wish, and in our own 
infirmary, and where we see our patient a dozen times in the day, 
it may be used with safety: but, out of doors, and where we do 
not see him more than once in twelve or four-and-twenty hours, 
it seems a little too much like playing with edged tools. If the 
tremor, the vertigo, and the purging, which it produces, are car¬ 
ried a little too far, the patient may be lost. Generally speak¬ 
ing, the hanging of the head, and the foaming at the mouth, and 
the sinking of the pulse, may give warning; but our assistant 
may not observe these syniptoms, or they may have existed many 
an hour before he arrives. In our own hospital it may be ad¬ 
mitted, and will not often deceive; but even there we could wish 
for something as effectual and safer, and you recollect the ac- 
