URINE
—is that well known excrementitious fluid secreted or separated by the kidnies from the blood; the evacuation of which is sometimes partially obstructed, or totally suppressed, by different injuries sustained, or diseases particularly affecting the kidnies, the bladder, or some of the parts appropriated to the secretion and discharge of urine. Internal inflammation, or a paralytic affection of the kidnies, as well as external violence there; spasmodic stricture upon the neck or sphincter of the bladder; calculous concretions, originating in the kidnies, and afterwards descending the ureters, occasions sometimes a most painful suppression of urine: having obtained a seat in the bladder, they then lay the foundation of stone; and many well-authenticated instances are extant, where stones of considerable weight have been extracted from the bladders of different horses after their death.
Horses, on the contrary, from a debility of the parts, or some remote causes, are subject to an immoderate and involuntary flux of urine, and that almost incessantly; so that, from a latent flaccidity, it seems to come away immediately after its secretion. This preternatural discharge may probably be sometimes occasioned by a sharp, ferous and acrimonious state of the blood; in young horses, the being too severely and unreasonably overworked; a weakness of the loins and kidnies, brought on by drawing weights disproportioned to the strength of the horse; standing long in the cold and chilling rains of winter; or, what produces it still more frequently, is the eating of ship oats, which have been long upon their passage, and imbibed a portion of saline particles, and effluvia, from the sea. In all cases of the former description, recourse must be had to medical assistance; but in the latter, nutritive food, gelatinous clean-boiled oatmeal gruel, with two or three ounces of gum Arabic dissolved in water, and mixed with the gruel for drink, will, in all slight and recent cases, be productive of a speedy restoration.