Farcy is of two kinds, the large and the small. The large may appear as one or more abscesses. Generally it is disposed to select, in the first instance, those places where the skin is thin and the hair all but absent. It breaks, and becomes shallow ulcers, which, however, may heal upon the application of any escharotic. The abscesses are not, in every instance, of one absolute figure. They vary in such respect, and have a tendency, if neglected, to generate large ulcers, from which spring unsightly bunches of fungoid granulations.
The smaller description of this disorder has no preference for any particular locality. It appears, like surfeit, in small lumps all over the body. These lumps, from their size and uniformity, have been likened to buttons—hence the term "button farcy." Cords soon connect them; they maturate and burst, like the larger sort. The "button farcy," however, leaves a deeper and a more painful ulcer. It yields less readily to treatment, and seems to exhibit itself before the body is utterly exhausted.
A PORTION OF SKIN, TAKEN FROM A
FARCIED HORSE, INJECTED WITH MERCURY.
How very numerous the absorbents of the skin are, may be conjectured from the subjoined engraving of a prepared specimen—and not a very successful one either—of a piece of farcied skin, when deprived of hair. In this case, the animal suffered under the large or common form of the disease. In the button variety, the tumors would only be smaller, of a more even size, and far more numerous.
Farcy is, by the generality of practitioners, regarded as a more tractable disease than glanders. Certainly the course of the disorder is arrested much easier; but, to cure the malady, there is a constitution to renovate and a virus to destroy. Is it in the power of medicine to restore the health and strength, which have been underfed, sapped by a foul atmosphere, and exhausted by overwork? Tonics may prop up or stimulate for a time; but the drunkard and the opium-eater, among human beings, can inform us that the potency of the best-selected and the choicest drugs, most judiciously prescribed and carefully prepared, is indeed very limited. What, then, can be hoped for in an animal whose treatment is generally an affair of pounds, shillings, and pence? Sulphate of copper or of iron, oak-bark, Cayenne pepper, and cantharides, probably, are the chief medicines the practitioner will give. With such the horse may be patched up; it may even return to work. But at what a risk! It carries about the seeds of a disorder contagious to the human species, and in man even more terrible than in the quadruped. Is it lawful, is it right, to save an avaricious master the chance of a few shillings, and to incur the risk of poisoning an innocent person? The author thinks not. Therefore he will give no directions how to arrest the progress of farcy. The horse, once contaminated, is, indeed, very rarely or never cured. The animal, after the veterinary surgeon has shaken hands with the proprietor and departed, too often bears about an enlarged limb, which impedes its utility, and, at any period, may break forth again with more than the virulence of the original affection.
A GENTLEMAN'S SERVANT OUT OF PLACE.