EMOLLIENTS
—are such external applications as mollify the surface, and alleviate any stricture upon the surrounding parts: they supple the solids, as well as sheath and soften any asperity of the fluids. Fomentations are of this class, and prove of the greatest utility in all tumefactions, enlargements, and many lamenesses of HORSES, with those practitioners who have judgment and patience to bring them perseveringly into use. From the relaxing property of emollient topics, and their sheathing of acrimony, it is that they are good sedative applications, when pain from tension or irritation is excited: from nervous sympathy, their efficacy is conveyed to distant and deep-seated parts, and thus it is that the warm bath proves in most cases so powerful a sedative. Emollients, whether in the use of fomentations, or the application of poultices, by relaxing the fibres, and increasing the congestion of fluids, greatly promote suppuration, to effect which in all inflammatory tumours, they should be immediately brought into use.