THE SETON NEEDLE PROTRUDED, AND SECURED WITHIN THE HANDLE BY MEANS OF A SCREW.
The screw being loosened, the button is struck, and the sharp needle shoots forward, cutting its way through any interposing obstacle.
However, never turn animals afflicted with fistulous withers or with poll evil out to grass. In the last disease, the motion of the head, the outstretching of the neck, and movement of the jaws occasion agony; and in the first instance, the necessity for perpetual action entails so much misery as soon renders the life worthless. The horse which is not worth the best of food in the best of stables, should not be doomed to a life of starvation and of torture. It is the shame of society that rich men are tempted by a few pounds to dispose of the creature which has been maimed in their service. Wounds endured when obeying the wishes of the master should endear the slave unto his lord. In the case of the willing steed, the law is reversed. The owner blemishes; and instead of nursing the wounded life, he disposes of it. The injured animal is sold to the first purchaser for so much as the damaged article will fetch.
FISTULOUS PAROTID DUCT.
This is a most serious evil, rather than a quickly-killing disease. The animal which is thus afflicted may endure for years; but each meal consumed and each day survived rates as a period of misery. When it is considered how much the happiness of the lower order of beings depends on merely feeding and living, it will be at once apparent how much the horse has lost when all enjoyment has departed from eating; when mere existence is embittered by being a prolongation of the suffering. The digestion becomes deranged, because the saliva, or a valuable secretion imperative to the proper performance of the function, is absent; while every movement is a pain occasioned by the agony of a diseased stomach and the anguish attendant upon a fistulous sore. The wretched creature, in this condition, speedily becomes an object of disgust to the most humane master; and, according to the convenient morality of modern times, is therefore sold to the highest bidder. Purchased only for the work which remains in the carcass, a fearful doom lies before the sick and debilitated quadruped. It rapidly sinks lower and lower, at each stage of its descent the food growing more scanty as the labor becomes more exhausting.
The parotid duct is the tube by which the saliva secreted by the gland is, during the act of mastication, conveyed into the mouth and mingled with the food. The parotid gland lies at the spot where the neck joins the jaw; within the interior of that body numerous fine hollow vessels connect and unite. These at each junction become larger and fewer in number, till at length they all terminate in one channel, which is the duct immediately about to be considered. It leaves the gland and travels for some space upon the inner side of the jaw; after which it curls under the inferior border of the bone and runs in front of the large masseter muscle of the horse's cheek.
Its injury is frequently occasioned by hay-seeds or particles of food, during the process of comminution, entering the open mouth of the duct; these, subsequently becoming swollen, prevent the free egress of the saliva. The secretion, nevertheless, goes forward and accumulates within the tube, which it greatly distends. A confined secretion produces the most exquisite agony. The motion of the jaw stimulates the gland to pour forth its fluid; thus every mouthful which the animal is forced to eat not only is the cause of suffering, but likewise occasions additional pressure to a channel already enlarged to bursting, and which at length bursts.
THE PAROTID DUCT DISTENDED BY A
SALIVARY CALCULUS.