THE LAMPAS IRON.
Would the groom take the trouble to examine the mouths of other young horses which "eat all before them," the "lampas" would be ascertained to be a natural development; but the ignorant always act upon faith, and never proceed on inquiry. Young horses alone are supposed to be subject to "lampas;" young horses have not finished teething till the fifth year. Horses are "broken" during colthood; they are always placed in stables and forced to masticate dry, artificial food before all their teeth are cut; shedding the primary molars is especially painful; of course, during such a process, the animal endeavors to feed as little as possible. A refusal to eat is the groom's strongest proof that lampas is present. But, putting the teeth on one side, would it be surprising if a change of food and a total change of habit in a young creature were occasionally attended with temporary loss of appetite? Is "lampas" necessary to account for so very probable a consequence? The writer has often tried to explain this to stable servants; but the very ignorant are generally the very prejudiced. While the author has been talking, the groom has been smiling; looking most provokingly knowing, and every now and then shaking his head, as much as to say, "ah, my lad, you can't gammon me!"
Young horses are taken from the field to the stable, from juicy grass to dry fodder, from natural exercise to constrained stagnation. Is it so very astonishing if, under such a total change of life, the digestion becomes sometimes deranged before the system is altogether adapted to its new situation? Is it matter for alarm should the appetite occasionally fail? But grooms, like most of their class, regard eating as the only proof of health. They have no confidence in abstinence; they cannot comprehend any loss of appetite; they love to see the "beards wagging," and reckon the state of body by the amount of provision consumed.
BURNING FOR LAMPAS.
The prejudices of ignorance are subjects for pity; the slothfulness of the better educated merits reprobation. The groom always gets the master's sanction before he takes a horse to be cruelly tortured for an imaginary disease. Into the hands of the proprietor has a Higher Power intrusted the life of His creature; and surely there shall be demanded a strict account of the stewardship. It can be no excuse for permitting the living sensation to be abused, that a groom asked and the master willingly left his duties to another. Man has no business to collect breathing life about him and then to neglect it. Every human being who has a servant, a beast or a bird about his homestead, has no right to rest content with the assertions of his dependents. For every benefit he is bound to confer some kindness. His liberality should testify to his superiority; but he obviously betrays his trust and abuses the blessings of Providence when he permits the welfare of the creatures, dependent on him, to be controlled by any judgment but his own.
The author will not describe the mode of firing for lampas. It is sufficient here to inform the reader that the operation consists in burning away the groom's imaginary prominences upon the palate. The living and feeling substance within a sensitive and timid animal's mouth is actually consumed by fire. He, however, who plays with such tools as red-hot irons cannot say, "thus far shalt thou go." He loses all command when the fearful instrument touches the living flesh: the palate has been burnt away, and the admirable service performed by the bars, that of retaining the food during mastication, destroyed. The bone beneath the palate has been injured; much time and much money have been wasted to remedy the consequence of a needless barbarity, and, after all, the horse has been left a confirmed "wheezer." The animal's sense being confused, and its brain agitated by the agony, the lower jaw has closed spasmodically upon the red-hot iron; and the teeth have seized with the tenacity of madness upon the heated metal.
When the lampas is reported to you, refuse to sanction so terrible a remedy; order the horse a little rest, and cooling or soft food. In short, only pursue those measures which the employment of the farrier's cure would have rendered imperative, and, in far less time than the groom's proposition would have occupied, the horse will be quite well and once more fit for service.