.THICK WIND. 
405 
the lungs, and increase the labour of these already over-worked 
organs. Particular care should be taken that the horse is not 
worked immediately after a full meal; the overcoming of the 
pressure and weight of the stomach will be a serious addition to 
the extra work which the lungs already have to perform from 
their altered structure. 
Exej'cise .—Something may be done, and more than has been 
generally supposed, in the palliation of thick wind, by means of 
exercise. If the thick-winded horse is put, as it were, into a 
regular system of training; if he is daily exercised to the fair 
extent of his power, and without seriously distressing him, his 
breathing will become freer and deeper, and his wind will mate¬ 
rially improve. We shall call to our aid here one of the most 
powerful excitants of the absorbent system—pressure ; the pres¬ 
sure of the air upon the tube'; the pressure of the working part 
of the lung upon the disorganized; and adjusting this, so as not 
to excite irritation or inflammation, we may sometimes do won¬ 
ders. You know, gentlemen, that this is the very secret of 
training, and that the power and the durability of the hunter 
and the racer depend entirely upon this. I may almost say, 
that every untrained horse is, to a certain degree, a thick-winded 
one: there is either a deposition of adipose, or other matter, or 
there is an indisposition in the parts to accommodate themselves 
to unusual exertion, and which gradually yields to the habit of 
exertion pushed to the point which the animal can bear without 
distress. A thick-winded horse may be seriously injured by 
being pushed beyond his pow’er ; the over-laboured cells or pas¬ 
sages may burst from the violent influx of the air, or its forcible 
expulsion, and thick wind may degenerate into broken wind; 
but, on the other hand, the horse is sure to suflTer from idleness; 
for the deposition or thickening will become more confirmed, and 
the parts will acquire an additional, and, perhaps, an habitual 
inaptitude for exertion. 
Thick xoind depends on Conformation .—Thick wind, however, 
is not always the consequence of disease. There are certain 
cloddy, round-chested horses, that are naturally thick-winded, at 
least to this extent,—they are capable of that slow exertion for 
which nature designed them, but they are immediately distressed 
and blown if put ever so little out of their usual pace. A circu¬ 
lar chest, whether the horse is large or small, indicates thick 
wind. The circular chest is a capacious one, and the lungs which 
fill it are large, and they supply sufficient arterialized blood to 
produce plenty of flesh and fat, and these horses are always fat. 
This is i\\Q, point of proof to which we look, wdicn all that we want 
from the animal is flesh and fat; but the expanding form of the 
