RHEUMATISM
.—That horses are afflicted with pains similar to those of the human species, is long since established beyond all power of controversy and contradiction. Dr. Darwin fixes its seat in the tendinous coats of the muscles, and attributes the pain to inspissated mucus left upon their surface; acting in the motion of the limbs as some extraneous substance, exciting extreme irritability and symptomatic inflammation. Horses are not only constantly liable to, but frequently attacked with, this disorder, which is more or less violent in different subjects, according to the state they happen to be in at the time of attack; and in some degree the cause by which it was occasioned. Professional judgment, deliberate examination, and nice discrimination, are all truly necessary to distinguish and decide upon this disorder. It is no uncommon thing for hasty and rash practitioners to look at such cases superficially, to embrocate, blister, and even fire, horses for a LAMENESS, when the cause of such defect has originated in the local pain described. Some horses are so much and so severely affected, as to be almost or quite unable to move, unless forced from their position; others, after standing in their stalls for two or three days, will suddenly fall, as if totally exhausted, and lay in extreme pain, with their legs extended to the utmost, take their food as they lay, and never attempt to rise, till compelled so to do by force and powerful assistance; in which state some horses remain for a month or six weeks before they are perfectly relieved, when they become repossessed of all their faculties, and are never known to experience a relapse. Repeated bleedings, strong spirituous stimulative embrocations, great and constant frictions, (after hot aromatic fomentations,) upon the parts affected, covering the extremities with flannel rollers, and giving cordial invigorants internally twice a day, are the only rational and scientific means of obtaining certain and expeditious alleviation and cure.