150 OPERATION OF (( FIRING 39 FOR ROARING. 
The cases alluded to were of recent date, and the animals 
not predisposed by conformation to become roarers; and as 
I am soliciting others to give, through your pages, accounts 
of cases that have come under their notice, wherein firing 
has been the means of establishing a cure, I perhaps may be 
excused if I relate one that was successfully treated by 
blisters alone. The patient was a brown gelding, belonging 
to the Duke d’Aumale. I think the horse was about nine 
years old, rather under fifteen hands two inches high, short 
legged, and not long in the neck, with a well-bred head and 
good shoulders; he had been constantly used as a hunter, 
and when my attention was called to him had been a roarer 
about three weeks. He had no cough, but there was a little 
stiffness about the throat, the glands of which were slightly 
swollen; he fed well, drank without difficulty, his spirits 
were good, and there was nothing else in any w r ay the matter 
with him, except that he made a great noise, not only in his 
gallop, but also in his trot. As I did not express myself 
very sanguine about the cure, the duke was inclined to get 
rid of him, but Mr. Coates, the chief of the stables, wishing 
the horse to be treated, the duke complied. I find, by 
reference to my case-book, that the horse w r as blistered three 
times, and had fourteen draughts given him (principally 
composed of nitrate of potash) between the 16 th of April 
and the 28th of May; during w r hich time he was kept per¬ 
fectly cool and quiet. He was hunted two seasons since, 
and the cure is as perfect as can be wished. Now 7 , I am of 
opinion that this case, satisfactory as it is, only encourages 
us to attempt a cure whenever the circumstances and form 
of the animal are to almost an equal extent favorable. 
I can also mention another horse that was cured by 
keeping a seton constantly over his larynx, he doing his 
work as a hunter and feeding well all the time. Being a 
black horse, I put brow n tape in, bringing it out as much on 
the off side as I could : the mane thus covered the eyesore. 
But there w r ere peculiarities about this case that, as I thought, 
admitted the hope of a cure, otherwise I should not have 
treated it. Of course cases w r ili sometimes occur in practice 
which, if handled with tact, give us a great hold on the con¬ 
fidence of the public, when in reality nature has done all, or 
nearly all the work for us; but even in such cases the vete¬ 
rinary surgeon is wrnrthy of his hire, when he has learnt to 
bow with submission to and patiently watch the working 
out of laws which the more he studies the less inclined he 
becomes to interfere with. What I wish is, to guard the 
profession against running aw 7 ay with the notion that, as a 
