The first object in attempting the cure is to abate inflammation, and this will be most readily accomplished by cold evaporating lotions, frequently applied to the part. Equal portions of spirit of wine, water, and vinegar, will afford an excellent application. It will be almost impossible to keep a bandage on. If the heat and lameness are considerable, it will be prudent to physic the horse, and to bleed from the subcutaneous vein. Whether the injury be of the annular ligament, or the sheath of the tendon, more active means will be necessary to perfect the cure. Either a liquid blister should be rubbed on the part, consisting of a vinous or turpentine tincture of cantharides, and this daily applied until some considerable swelling takes place, which should be allowed to subside, and then the liniment again resorted to; or, what is the preferable plan, the hair should be cut off, and the part blistered as soon as the heat has been subdued. The blister should be repeated until the horse goes sound, and the swelling has disappeared. In severe cases it may be necessary to fire, but we cannot recommend the indiscriminate recourse to the hot iron in every case of curb, and we would uniformly give a fair trial to milder measures. If the iron be used, the strokes should be in straight lines.
There are few complaints in which absolute and long continued rest is more requisite, than in curb. An injury so serious leaves the parts very materially weakened, and, if the horse be soon put to work again, the lameness will frequently return. No horse that has had curbs should be put even to ordinary work in less than a month after the apparent cure, and even then he should very gradually resume his former habits. A horse with a curb is manifestly unsound.
Curb, v. To guide a horse with a curb; to restrain; to check.
Curd, s. The coagulation of milk.
Cure, s. Remedy, restorative; act of healing.
Cure, v. To heal, to restore to health, to remedy.
Curlew, (Scolopax arquata, Linn.; Le Courlis, Buff.), s. A kind of waterfowl.
The bill is long, equally incurvated, and terminated in a blunt point; nostrils linear, and longitudinal near the base; tongue short and sharp-pointed; and the toes are connected as far as the first joint, by a membrane.
With the curlew, Linnæus begins a numerous tribe of birds under the generic name of scolopax, which, in his arrangement, includes all the snipes and godwits, amounting, according to Latham, to forty-two species and eight varieties, spread over various parts of the world, but nowhere very numerous.