I would strenuously recommend the work for its simplicity and usefulness to country gentlemen and other owners of valuable horses who can afford to purchase it; they would derive great assistance from it, not only as far as regards the written matter, but also from the spirited and very characteristic illustrations, exemplifying more clearly than any description possibly can do, matters connected with the treatment of horses under disease.
As to this little work, any remedy herein advised to be used, without reference to competent authorities, is practical and may be depended on, though intended to be harmless in any event.
However, every one must be aware that doctors will differ, and some who are critics may have pet theories of their own, which they might here and there prefer to parts of the practice here recommended.
It may be borne in mind, nevertheless, that diseases, like politics, with time and occasion are liable to change their character.
Many diseases are far more easily prevented than cured; and I must, in the very first instance, protest against the unnatural and injurious warmth by heated foul air, so much advocated by grooms, as a means of giving condition, to produce which, food, work, and air are the safe and natural agents.
Wherever a means of avoiding any disease herein touched upon has suggested itself, it is prominently set forth, in just appreciation of the golden rule, that “prevention is better than cure.”
OPERATIONS.
As all painful operations can now be performed under the influence of chloroform, the least compensation an owner can make to his poor beast for the tortures he is put to, in order to enhance his value and usefulness to his master, is to lay an injunction on the professional attendant to make use of this merciful provision, in cases where severe pain must otherwise be inflicted on the animal.
Rarey’s method of casting for operations, or when a horse is so extremely unruly as to require to be thrown down, may be thus quoted from his own directions:—
“Everything that we want to teach a horse must be commenced in some way to give him an idea of what you want him to do, and then be repeated till he learns perfectly.