THOUGHTS ON BROKEN WIND. 
58 
are fed on the dry grass pulled up by the roots, broken wind is 
comparatively unknown! Perhaps their out-of-door system of 
stabling may have something to do with it, though a still more 
likely reason would be, that their climate is equable. Changes of 
temperature exercise a most surprising effect in the production 
of bronchitis. In man, for instance, in England the disease is 
common; but in Canada and India it is very rare; and so it may 
be in France. But to return to the subject: what has bad hay, 
whether mow-burnt or not, to do with a disease supposed to be 
emphysema of the lungs I Although it seems difficult, at first, to 
answer, yet I think I can make it apparent. As to the fact, 
there is no denying it: it is an every-day observation. We 
know very well that, if a horse has the premonitory symptoms 
of broken wind, we can arrest or delay the attack by diminish¬ 
ing his ration of hay, and we are well aware that horses fed 
principally on dry hay are the subjects of broken wind. In 
the island of Jersey, where the hay is of very bad quality, the 
numbers of broken-winded horses are very great, and they 
suffer most from the second crop of hay. Bad hay, or a diet 
wholly of hay of any quality, seems to induce a disease of the 
mucous surfaces of the stomach and intestines, 
Indigestion —and we are all aware of the intimate connexion 
there is between the lungs and stomach through the medium of 
the pneumo-gastric nerves, and vice versa from the lungs to the 
stomach*. Diseased action once set up in the stomach is com¬ 
municated to the lining membrane of the bronchi, producing in¬ 
flammation of a very low asthenic character, first evidenced by a 
peculiar cough of a smothered description, as short as the animal 
can possibly make it; shewing plainly that it hurts him, and 
that he on that account avoids coughing as much as he can. It 
is quite distinct from the cough of catarrh. There is no sore 
throat, nor any of the usual catarrhal symptoms attending it. 
This state of things may last for a considerable time—does 
sometimes for years, indeed. The cough increases, or it comes 
on by spasmodic fits; and at last we find a difference in the state 
of the breathing, viz. that there is a perceptible heave at the 
flanks, and that the time occupied by the expiratory effort is 
greater than that in the inspiratory, which is evidently occasioned 
by the abdominal muscles being called into play to assist in the 
* This idea of nervous influence originated with Dupuy, and is, inD’Arboval’s 
estimation, the most accurate of any. Some anormal condition, but little known 
and hardly suspected even, of the pulmonary nerves, preceded by such circum¬ 
stances as, in connexion either with the lungs, stomach, or other part, or through 
sympathy, are capable of altering the structure of these nerves, or of influencing 
their low functions. Both Dupuytrin and Dupuy have remarked symptoms re¬ 
sembling those of broken wind in cases of compression or section of the pneumo- 
gastric nerves. 
