Straw yards are abominations into which no feeling man should thrust the horse he prizes; and no feeling man should long possess a horse without esteeming it. The docility is so complete, the obedience so entire, and the intelligence so acute, that it is hard to suppose a mortal possessing a creature thus endowed, without something more than a sheer regard for property growing up between the master and the servant.
Every amiable sentiment is appealed to by the absolute trustfulness of the quadruped. It appears to give itself, without reservation, to the man who becomes its proprietor. Though gregarious in its nature, yet, at the owner's will, it lives alone. It eats according to human pleasure, and it even grows to love the imprisonment under which it is doomed to exist. Cruelty cannot interfere with its content. Brutality may maim its body and wear out its life; but as its death approaches, it faces the knacker with the same trustfulness which induced it, when in its prime, to yield up every attribute of existence to gain the torture and abuse of an ungrateful world.
Liberal food, clean lodging, soft bed, healthy exercise, and good grooming compose the only medicine imperative for the cure of hide-bound. The relief, however, may be hastened by the daily administration of two of those tonics and alterative drinks which act so directly upon the skin:—
Drink for Hide-bound.
| Liquor arsenicalis | Half an ounce. |
| Tincture of muriate of iron | One ounce. |
| Water | One pint. |
| Mix, and give as a dose. |
LICE.
These parasites are the consequences natural to the states of filth and debility. Insects, which have been mistaken for lice, sometimes infest large stables and almost drive the horses frantic with the itching they provoke. Application after application, intended to destroy lice, is made use of. Every recognized source of contagion is exterminated. Internal as well as external medicine is resorted to, but every endeavor to remove the annoyance signally fails. The horses are fat and feed upon the best; yet they seem to breed the parasites peculiar to the opposite condition. At last some one points to the hen-roost which leans against the stable. That building is pulled down, and with it the nuisance disappears.
It may to the reader appear strange that the application which killed lice did not destroy the insects derived from fowls. Those parasites which were upon the horse doubtless perished; but the dressing being washed off, the pests came again and again, being supplied by the source of all the mischief.
Insects breathe through the skin. On that account, a hornet is more readily destroyed by dropping a little oil upon the exterior surface than by immersing the head in hydrocyanic acid. All, therefore, requisite for the removal of lice is smearing the entire body with any cheap oil or grease. But when the skin is washed, the business is not ended. Generally the horse troubled with lice is hide-bound, and may have various other affections derived from the debility which generated the parasites.