24 
CHRONIC RHEUMATISM IN THE HORSE. 
to exist, except a little pain on pressure being applied to the 
larger muscles. On inquiring the length of time he had 
been in his then present state, I was informed for some months. 
Being requested to undertake the treatment of the case, 
and as it appeared to me to be one of chronic rheumatism, I 
commenced by stimulating the shoulders and quarters, and 
administered internally the Liquor Pot. Arsenicalis. Under 
this mode of treatment the animal decidedly improved for 
about two months, and we were in hopes that he would be 
able to start for the race, he having won the Ladies’ Purse 
the previous meeting; but the weather becoming wet and 
foggy, he became again lame and stiff, although not nearly so 
bad as when I first saw him. 
A second case occurred in an old horse belonging to an 
editor of one of the papers, but the animal being thirteen or 
fourteen years old, and so stiff that he could scarcely get one 
leg before the other, I entertained no hopes whatever of a 
satisfactory issue. The owner, however, thinking of the old 
adage, “ where there’s life there’s hope,” persuaded me to 
try what could be done for his favorite. I gave to him the 
Iodide of Potassium, knowing this to be a valuable medicine 
for the same disease in the human subject, and stimulated 
the muscles as in the previous case. But, although this 
treatment was continued for some time, and the owner 
fancied he could see some improvement, I could not say that 
I saw any. I therefore recommended him to be shot, hoping 
to have an opportunity of making a post-mortem examina¬ 
tion. All my persuasion, however, with repeated arguments 
adduced by me for the benefit of science, proved of no avail: 
the obdurate editor could not be tempted to part with his horse. 
I happened to mention the circumstance subsequently to 
an eminent merchant in the colony, who informed me that 
he had destroyed several horses for the same thing, and his 
groom, in several cases, had examined the joints, which, to 
use his own expression, “ had the appearance of being eaten 
away by worms,” so that the affection evidently resolves 
itself into caries of the articular surfaces of the bones. I am 
sorry that no further opportunity presented itself to me for 
investigating a subject pregnant with so much interest. 
Although many horses were thus attacked and destroyed 
before my arrival, during a stay of seven months not a single 
post-mortem examination could I get. But the conclusion 
I have come to from the meagre opportunities I have had, is, 
that preparations of arsenic, with counter irritation, will often 
be found useful in the chronic stage of this disease. 
