EXAMINATION AS TO SOUNDNESS OF HORSES. 
33 
surgeon can discern. The latter will pronounce the animal, 
in his opinion, entirely sound, and yet within twenty-four 
hours the animal may be a resident of horse heaven. I have 
known horses to have these spells of sickness every few days 
for a year and in one case for four years, and finally get well 
entirely. One case came under my observation a few years 
ago during the holding of the State Fair at Rochester. I was 
called to attend a very valuable stallion, aged two years. He 
was suffering considerable pain from what was evidently a 
case of acute indigestion. Remedies were administered, and 
in the morning the colt was apparently as well as ever. Be¬ 
fore a week had gone by he was similiarly attacked, and the 
same treatment was given, with the same beneficial effect as 
before. I inquired of the owner if he was liable to these at¬ 
tacks, and was told he had them quite frequently. I pre¬ 
scribed for the same stallion for the same trouble perhaps 
forty times. Every few weeks from the time he was two 
years old until he was six, at which age he died, he was af¬ 
fected with the trouble noted. I was called to attend him on 
his last attack, but he was dead before I reached the farm. I 
performed an autopsy on him and found a large pear-shaped 
body attached to the villious coat of the stomach. This 
tumor, which was of a fibrous nature and about a pound’s 
weight, had a cyst in the centei which, upon cutting into, I 
found contained about a tablespoonful of thick cheesy pus. 
Unquestionably this tumor was the cause of the animal’s fre¬ 
quent painful attacks and his ultimate death. For four years 
he was used in the stud and was apparently sound, and yet 
he had, perhaps from his birth, a blemish that proved fatal and 
which no examination by any surgeon could have disclosed 
without cutting him open with a knife, a process which horse 
owners are not likely to sanction in order to get a certificate 
of unquestioned soundness. 
I instance, in a general way, these points to bring out some 
discussion regarding the best form of a certificate to be made 
by a veterinary surgeon. I think that the Association should 
adopt some form which could be generally used, which would 
be conservative, and yet as definite as circumstances would 
