COUGH. 
mous labour and very serious loss to a wise and 
diligent successor. A field of light and porous 
soil overrun with this weed, must, when in a dry 
state, in summer weather, be ploughed up with 
a deep ploughshare, pulverized with the roller, 
swept with the harrows or couch-rake, and as 
thoroughly cleansed as possible with the grubber 
or with long-tined heavy harrows,—all the couch- 
roots brought to the surface being carefully re- 
moved to at least the headlands, or, more wisely, 
to the farmery ; and—as many joints and small 
pieces of the roots are unavoidably broken off by 
the implements, and left in the soil, and would, 
if not smothered, very speedily produce a new 
growth of the weed—the field must next be laid 
down to grass, and kept, during several years, in 
a state of depasturement with sheep and cattle. 
A field of very stiff clay overrun with couch-grass 
may be reclaimed with much more ease and 
cheapness; for, unless in some extraordinary in- 
stances, it needs but to have the weed buried at a 
depth of about nine inches, either by means of 
trench-ploughing, with ordinary ploughs, or by 
means of a single-furrowing with a heavy, four- 
horse, deep-cutting, old-fashioned, turn- wrist 
plough. 
The roots of couch-grass, when gathered in the 
process of cleaning, are usually burnt by British 
farmers; but they:would be quite as thoroughly 
destroyed, and would yield vastly more manurial 
matter, if decomposed by means of lime. In 
Rome and Naples, however, they are extensively 
used, either in a simply washed condition, or in 
a state of mixture with carrots, as food for horses ; 
and in Britain, they might be given raw to pigs, 
steamed or boiled to horses and cattle, and wash- 
ed, macerated, and manufactured into farina for 
human beings. They contain nutritive matter 
of the same kind and nearly in the same propor- 
tion as potato tubers; they readily yield up that 
matter into the culinary and desirable form of a 
starchy powder resembling arrow-root; and on 
arenaceous grounds in remote districts, far from 
good markets or from the best resources of hus- 
bandry, they might probably afford profitable re- 
turns as a crop,—especially as they would require 
no other cultivation than to be coaxed into rapid 
ramification, and allowed ample scope to choke 
and kill antagonistic weeds. 
COUGH. A forcible expulsion of air from the 
chest, or a violent effort of the diaphragm and 
the intercostal and abdominal muscles, to remove 
some obstruction to the perfectly free passage of | 
the gases in breathing. It is not a disease, but 
the symptom of some one or more of many 
diseases; it varies in character according to the 
nature of the particular disease with which it is 
connected ; and, in any instance, it can be safely 
interfered with or healthily removed, only by at- 
tacking and curing the disease or diseases which 
occasion it. Coughs of different kinds attend al- 
most all diseases of the respiratory organs, from 
| the slightest to the most deadly,—catarrh, pneu- 
COUMARIN. 
883 
monia, pleura, phthisis, asthma, and, what in 
horses, are called thick wind and broken wind; 
and they not only indicate the existence of these 
diseases, but, by their different kinds of sounds, 
actions, and sympathies, materially assist the 
professional observer to distinguish each of the 
diseases from the rest. Other coughs, especially 
such as are chronic or of long continuance, are 
occasioned by diseases which might seem to have 
little or no special connexion with the air passages, 
—particularly by diseases of the liver, diseases 
of the stomach, irritations of the intestinal canal, 
and a great variety of nervous disorders ; and not 
a few of these coughs are exceedingly perplexing 
to practitioners, and sometimes afford occasion 
for shrewd, far-sighted, and powerful exercise of 
professional skill. 
Nervous or spasmodic coughs are, of course, far 
more numerous and diversified in the human 
subject than in horses and cattle; but coughs of 
other kinds are perhaps quite as many and trou- 
blesome. “But besides these cases,” remarks 
Blaine in reference to the horse, “there exists at 
times, without any attendant difficulty of breath- 
ing (the horse at the same time eating well and 
thriving), a permanent cough, usually more con- 
siderable in the morning and evening, after meals, 
particularly after drinking, or on first going out 
to exercise. 
common, and it will remain in this state, with- 
out otherwise affecting the horse, for years, some- 
times even his whole life. In other instances, it 
does not end in so harmless a manner, but, upon 
any occasional cold taken, becomes more agegra- 
vated; and each cold makes it worse and worse, | 
until at length, by repeated attacks on the bron- 
chize, the ultimate ramifications become con- 
gested and thickened with coagulable matter, 
and the respiration or ‘wind’ is at last perma- 
nently affected.” 
ally spoken of as a disease under the name of 
chronic cough, is really a symptomatic disorder 
of very diversified cause and nature, and ought 
to be attacked only through the disease which 
occasions it; and when it developes itself into | 
severe or permanent injury of the respiration, it 
becomes identified with what farriers call thick- 
wind and broken-wind. See the articles Taicx- 
Winn, Broxen-Winp, CATARRH, CONSUMPTION, 
and several others. . 3 
COULTER. See Provex. 
COUMARIN. ‘The peculiar odoriferous prin- 
ciple of the tonquin bean. The tropical, ever- 
green, leguminous tree which produces that bean 
is variously designated by botanists Diptervx odo- 
rata, Baryosma Tongo, and Coumarouna odorata ; 
and from the last of these generic designations is 
formed the name of the bean’s peculiar principle. 
This substance is white, hotly pungent, and pe- 
culiarly aromatic; it crystallizes sometimes in 
square needles, and sometimes in short prisms; 
and, though neither acidulous nor alkaline, but 
A cough of this description is very 
But such a cough as this, even | 
before affecting the horse’s “wind,” though usu- | 
