STRANGLES
—is a disorder to which young horses in general are always liable, and few or none escape, any more than children escape the small-pox, hooping-cough, or measles. It first displays itself in a heaviness of the head, a dulness of the eyes, a reluctance to action, a heat in the mouth, and a gradually declining appetite: this is followed by a swelling in the concavity beneath the under jaw, which being centrical, is sometimes surrounded by two or three tumefactions of smaller formation. These, in their progress to maturation, are frequently slow, and require patient perseverance in external application; for in all cases of suppuration, NATURE may be led, but will never be driven. During the time the matter is forming, and progressively getting into a state of concoction, an internal soreness of the throat correspondingly comes on, and is followed by an almost or total refusal of food. When it is ascertained that STRANGLES is the true face of the disorder, care must be taken to avoid bleeding, and every kind of medical evacuants, which would tend to embarrass Nature in her own efforts, and protract the crisis of disease; upon which the very safety of the horse, and his expeditious cure, entirely depend.
The strangles is a disorder standing in much greater need of nursing, and constant stable attendance, than the least medical interposition: the system requires to be kept up by art, and every nutritious attention in proportion as the appetite has been observed to decline. In its earliest stage, no attempt whatever should be made at repulsion, (by external astringents, or any spirituous application whatever;) on the contrary, hot emollient fomentations to the part, (with two sponges dipt in the decoction alternately for a quarter of an hour daily,) followed directly with stimulative poultices of a proper heat, repeated and patient offers of gruel and sweet-wort, mixed a little warm in a pail perfectly clean, and free from grease. Small quantities of mash (prepared of ground malt and bran, equal parts) should, at proper intervals, be placed in the manger: these and the gruel being constantly refused, the case will then require the additional adoption of a pectoral cordial ball, to be dissolved in a pint of gruel, and mildly insinuated about a third part with the horn at each time, till the whole is got down; and this should be repeated three times in every twenty-four hours, till the tumor is broke, and the crisis arrives; when which is observed, if the aperture is too small, it may be a little enlarged with the point of any instrument, that the matter may the more easily run off. To promote this, the poultice, covering a pledget of digestive ointment, should be continued for two or three days, when a cure is soon effected. Two or three doses of physic, or a course of alteratives, is always necessary after this disease.