The hair affords a good ground to which any other substance can be fastened; but it is rendered better by being thoroughly washed with soft soap and warm water. The ablution deprives the skin of the horse of its naturally unctuous secretion, and permits the adhesive application a better chance.
The horse should be allowed no food which necessitates mastication. The head should be fastened to the pillar-reins during the process of cure. Thin gruel only should be presented while treatment is progressing, and that should be continued until the covering falls off. Should the wound not be healed, allow a couple of days to elapse; but give no solid food. Permit the horse to rest on refuse tan—not straw, which might be eaten—during all this time. Afterward renew the attempt, and repeat it again if necessary—though the first trial generally succeeds.
Before concluding, it may be well to arm the reader against those practices generally adopted by horse doctors. These practices consist in the use of the red-hot budding iron, which is among them a very popular application to a fistulous parotid duct. The theory which induces this resort is, a belief that the heated iron induces an eschar, and the wound closes before the crust falls off. Red-hot iron is, however, far more disposed to destroy substance than to favor growth; and, probably, its curative properties could have gained faith among no other class. Possibly there exists no other body which would credit that, to burn a hole larger, was the best way to close it. Another artifice is to inject caustic lotions up the duct, and thereby occasion the gland to slough out. Against such cruelty the author is pleased to think little need be said. The operation, when successful, causes so much irritation as endangers the life; for the body of the gland is permeated by so many and such important vessels as render the termination always very dubious.
PHLEBITIS, OR INFLAMMATION OF THE VEIN.
Formerly it was the custom to bleed horses for everything and for nothing. It was not even suspected that a creature which exists only to labor unto the limit of possibility is far more likely to be the victim of debility than of repletion. It never occurred to any master that his wretched animal wanted blood putting into it rather than abstracting the smallest quantity of blood from it. However, formerly bleeding was a favorite resort with the apothecary, and the old veterinary surgeon seems to have followed the bad example. Aged people have informed the writer that they remember the time when, on a Sunday morning, a long shed was filled with agricultural horses standing in a row. These victims were all waiting to be bled. The veterinary surgeon's assistant used to take the fleam, and to open a vein in the first animal's neck. Then he would proceed to the second; and thus, in turn, he would open the jugulars of the entire number. No account was taken of the quantity of blood lost; that flowed forth till the last had been operated upon, when all the creatures stood simultaneously draining forth their lives.
The veterinary surgeon's assistant subsequently returned, and pinned up the orifice of the first horse; then he went and performed that office for the succeeding animal. Thus he, a second time, progressed down the row, pinning up as he proceeded; and the poor horses often tottered before he came. All this was done for a human fancy: man thought the loss of blood, at spring and autumn, beneficial to all kinds of life. The writer has heard of old ladies who were very skillful in bleeding cats. Most cats, however, resist such an application of medical talent; not so the horse: this animal submits itself patiently to the master's will. The creature seems to recognize that it has no right to exist except by the permission of its owner. There is no living being which acknowledges so abject a dependence.
In return it is made a sport of the idlest whims. Hence horses, after bleeding, were all thought to be much benefited. They were expected to perform greater labor and to continue in sounder health. In vain did the disease visit the stable more frequently; to no purpose was diminished capability displayed. The ungrateful bodies of the "plaguy beasts" were blamed, which would go wrong even after mortal science had expended its wealth upon them. Man never doubted his own wisdom; he never questioned his own conduct; and it is astonishing the quantity of prejudice which is from year to year perpetuated for the want of a small amount of so cheap an article as mental inquiry.
The worst of the evil still remains to be told. The creatures, being bled, were esteemed so greatly benefited as to require no subsequent attention. Phlebitis was consequently, in other days, a rather common affection. If neglected, the disease may terminate in death. In cases aggravated by mistaken measures, the disorder mounts to the brain, and occasions awful agonies. Taken early and properly administered to, this disposition is easily arrested. It was formerly wrongly treated, and was traced to an erroneous origin. Phlebitis was, to the perfect satisfaction of learned judges seated on the bench, attributed to the surgeon's want of care. So serious an evil was imagined to be caused by culpable neglect during a trivial operation. It was thought to have been provoked by the use of a foul instrument, or by employing anything else to strike a fleam than a properly-made blood-stick.
Experiments, however, which were instituted at the Royal Veterinary College, have proved that no want of care, during the performance of bleeding, can provoke the disorder. Wretched horses, in that establishment, have been punctured with dirty, rusty, blunt, and jagged fleams; all manner of blood-sticks have been employed in every description of way. These have been struck violently and tapped in the gentlest fashion. Every possible sort of pinning up has been adopted; but the utmost endeavor of intentional perversion could not produce inflammation of the vein. There appears to be only one ascertained cause: that is, bleed; do not tie up the head, but turn it into a field, or present fodder to be eaten off the ground, and the animal will have phlebitis. The pendulous position of the head and the motion of the jaws alone seem capable of starting inflammation in the jugular vein. Therefore, should the reader ever permit a horse to be bled—which, save in extreme cases, is perfectly unnecessary—let him remember to place the animal subsequently in the stable, to tie the halter to the rack for twenty-four hours, and, during the same space, to abstain from allowing any food. These injunctions, however, do not refer to the bleedings sometimes adopted to counteract acute disease.
There is one circumstance which should always be well considered before any horse is bled: Certain animals have a constitutional predisposition toward this peculiar form of disease. The horse whose vein shall inflame no man can, by sign, mark, or investigation, pick from a herd. It is, however, an ascertained fact that particular animals, of no fixed breed, and apparently characterized by no recognized state of body, have a mighty tendency to exhibit this particular disorder. The horse may appear unexceptionable as regards health; but, nevertheless, strike it with a fleam or puncture it with a lancet, and phlebitis will undoubtedly be generated; none of the usual precautions can always prevent the misfortune. Such predisposition evidently depends on a determinate condition of system which science has hitherto failed to recognize.