MASH
—is a name given to a kind of universal PANACEA for horses during a course of PHYSIC, or labouring under COUGH, COLD, or DISEASE. Mashes are differently made, according to the necessity which occasions their being brought into use: some are made with BRAN and HONEY; others with equal parts of OATS and BRAN, with or without honey; but the most fragrant, useful, attracting, and invigorating, is made from GROUND MALT, with such proportion of BRAN as will disunite the glutinous adhesive property of the MALT, and reduce its sweetness enough to prevent a satiety by its clamminess in mastication. Malt mashes (and the liquid pressed from them) horses will generally take in different dangerous disorders, as FEVERS, INFLAMMATION OF THE LUNGS, STRANGLES, &c. when they will take (spontaneously) no other kind of FOOD or NUTRIMENT. Mashes should be always made of ingredients perfectly SWEET, without the least taint of mustiness, and in pails or vessels free from every possibility of grease; they should also be prepared with water boiling hot, which being once stirred together, may then be covered down till of a proper warmth to be placed in the manger; which should never be of greater heat than new milk from the cow, unless in cases where a FUMIGATION may be required to relax and take off a stricture from the glandular parts, and promote a discharge from the nostrils.