SWEATING of JOCKIES
—is a ceremony which every JOCKEY is under the necessity of going through when engaged to ride, and the horse is to carry less than his own natural weight. For the reduction of weight, jockies are obliged to encounter great inconveniencies, particularly when they have much to lose, and a very short time to lose it in. The means of reducing themselves to the weight required are various, and depend upon the greater or lesser quantity they wish to lose in a given time, and have to waste themselves accordingly. If they have but two or three pounds to lose, they will waste that in a single day's abstinence, and a morning and evening's walking: should four or five pounds be required, a gentle laxative, followed by two or three days extra walking, with an additional waistcoat or two, will generally carry the point: if more is necessary to be lost, it is sometimes a hazardous reduction, and great exertions are made to effect it: additional purgation, continued abstinence, increased perspiration, and almost perpetual exercise, all which, if persevered in to an extreme, tend to undermine the natural stamen by which the frame is supported, and absolutely saps the constitution. Instances have been numerous, where JOCKIES have undertaken to waste fourteen or sixteen pounds against the day of running; which having been at no great distance, they have, in addition to the evacuations already described, submitted their bodies to the debilitating FUMES of a hot-bed; and what is still more extraordinary, to be immersed in the stench and steam of a DUNGHILL to effect their purpose, which so completely relaxed the solids, and deranged the system of the natural economy, that consumption followed, and DEATH soon closed the scene.