3G3 A FEW OBSERVATIONS ON THE MORBID 
the transfer of a horse, to all and every appearance and exami¬ 
nation, sound and in perfect health, who that day week, or fort¬ 
night, or three weeks, or within some such short period, is on his 
way, a lifeless carcass in a knacker’s cart, to the slaughter-house. 
The purchaser, in the midst of hopes and expectations raised in 
his mind upon the acquisition of his “ new horse,” becomes 
mortified with disappointment; while the vendor is made hardly 
less so, though the latter’s regret, it is possible, may not so much 
proceed from sympathy with the buyer as from the apprehension 
of pecuniarily suffering through law suit, or otherwise, for the 
sad catastrophe : albeit, in the majority of cases, extreme in¬ 
justice is apt to be done to the seller from the erroneous con¬ 
struction, on the part of men who know little or nothing about 
such matters, put on the case should it come to be .matter of 
judicial litigation. Though there be no relevancy, in a scientific 
point of view, in the anecdote I am going to relate, yet for the 
sake of imparting to the inexperienced a little worldly know¬ 
ledge, in comparison with which, in the language of Sir Giles 
Overreach, “ all other knowledge I value not a straw,” let 
it for this once pass. An intimate friend of mine had sold a 
five-year-old horse to a gentleman, an acquaintance of both his 
and mine, for which he had received a cheque. Meeting my 
friend a day or two afterwards, I said, “ Well! have you sold 
your horse V ’—“ Yes,” was the reply, and got the money too 
for it!—at least, I have got a cheque .” “ Oh! a cheque, have 
you 1 That is not money.” No; on second consideration, I 
don’t think it is—I will therefore go to-day, and get it cashed .” 
Two days after this he received a letter to say the horse was 
“ taken unwell.” Within a fortnight from the time of sale, the 
horse died of pneumonia. The purchaser immediately wrote 
to my friend to know, “ what allowance” would be made for this 
unfortunate event. The answer was, “ None.” It was, probably, 
lucky the cheque had been converted into cash. 
Every veterinary practitioner, of any standing in practice, 
well knows in what surprisingly short periods of time effusions 
from the pleural surfaces into the cavity of the chest take place : 
examination of the horse dead, even in so short a time as three 
or four days after purchase, not infrequently presenting collec¬ 
tions of water and shreds of coagulable lymph, which to the eyes 
of those unacquainted with medical matters assume so formidable 
an aspect that the case is set down at once as being a “ rotten” 
one, or, in other words, as one the seeds of which were doubt¬ 
lessly sown even some considerable time before the sale. This 
is a case too notorious among veterinarians to need any di¬ 
latation or elucidation here : it is the preliminary changes apt 
to succeed this, or which may occur independently of active 
