NEEDLE-WORMS
—are small white worms with a sharp-pointed head, having their seat in the rectum of a horse, from whence they are frequently discharged with the dung, but are difficult to dislodge and extirpate entirely. By their unceasing action, (twirling and twisting in the dung when expelled,) it is natural to conceive, how very much they irritate, disquiet, and distress an animal where they have acquired possession; of this there needs no greater proof, than the excrements frequently and suddenly coming away in a liquified state, as if the horse was under a course of physic. And this is evidently the cause why horses eternally teazed and persecuted with these diminutive enemies, always appear low in flesh, rough in the coat, sunk in the eyes, and depressed in the spirits: eternally labouring under internal disquietude, they derive but little advantage from REST, or nourishment from FOOD. They are sometimes not only reduced, but eradicated, by ANTIMONIALS; but as this is not always to be relied on, MERCURIAL PHYSIC is justified upon the broad basis of experience, as the only infallible mode of extirpation.