,—an article whose acrid and stimulative property renders it only applicable to one medical purpose, and that externally; it constitutes a principal ingredient in the preparation of BLISTERING OINTMENT for HORSES, where its proportion, if managed properly, should be exactly equal with its corresponding article CANTHARIDES, commonly called Spanish flies.
EVACUANTS
—are such medicines as gently stimulate the intestines, and urinary passages, to a more speedy secretion and expulsion of their excrementitious contents. The term is applicable to both PURGATIVES and DIURETICS; the effect of which is to remove plethora in horses, and to prevent the consequent viscidity of blood; which, when a horse is overloaded in his frame, and the solids too grossly distended, soon displays itself in swelled legs, cracked heels, cutaneous scurfy eruptions, grease, farcy, or some one of the many ills frequently produced by an accumulation of HUMOURS originating in a corrupt or vitiated state of the fluids, inconsiderately neglected, or probably never attended to. Those who will condescend to dedicate a little time occasionally to the palpable utility of EVACUANTS, either as preventives, or the means of cure, (in a variety of cases,) will never stand in need of a monitor to promote their use.
EVACUATION
—is that part of the ANIMAL ŒCONOMY, without a regular preservation of which, the frame of man or beast cannot long continue free from PAIN or DISEASE. Next to the aliment necessarily received for the support of life, EVACUATION is the very effort of Nature upon which HEALTH must principally depend. Little penetration is requisite to comprehend most perfectly a system so plain as to require but very concise explanation. Consistency should be observed, and attention should be paid, to what the frame receives by FOOD, and what it discharges by the different evacuations; for if the body (within any given time) accumulates much more by unreasonable and unnecessary supplies, than the EFFORTS of Nature can carry off by her different emunctories in the evacuation of excrements, the foundation of disease follows of course. The fluids become thick and stagnant, the circulation languid, the solids preternaturally distended, and their elasticity partially destroyed; hence arises that infinite number of distorted VALETUDINARIANS with which the streets of the Metropolis so plentifully abound, and by whom the constantly increasing MEDICAL SHOPS and MEDICINE WHAREHOUSES are principally supported.
By adverting to these considerations, it will immediately appear, that even a temporary suppression of the natural evacuations must, in the first instance, inevitably prove the basis of pain or disquietude, and lastly of DISEASE. In the human body, great attention should be paid to diurnal evacuation, if a wish to preserve health is at all entertained. Infinite are the miseries originally brought on, and for years continued, (to a lingering death,) by an inconsiderate neglect or indolence in respect to the due proportion to be observed between repletion and evacuation.
This attention is not more necessary in the human frame, than it is with the HORSES of those who indulge the least desire to have their studs in high health and perfect condition. When a horse is observed to get above himself, or, in other words, to become loaded with flesh, too full in the carcase, round in the legs, thick in the wind, dull in the stable, and heavy in action, EVACUATION cannot be too soon promoted as a preventive to impending disease.
EXCRESCENCE
.—Any preternatural enlargement is so called; but it is principally, and most properly, applied to those of a spongy nature, as WARTS and WENS, as well as a polypus upon any particular part. In all wounds of HORSES, if they are of considerable magnitude, fungous flesh increases very rapidly, and frequently disconcerts the young or injudicious VETERINARIAN; who, erroneously adopting caustics and escharotics, too often renders the remedy more destructive than the disease. Fungous formation of this kind passes also under the technical denomination of EXCRESCENCE, and is best reduced by superficial scarification in lines transverse and longitudinal; the dressings then consisting of strong red precipitate digestive ointment with lint, &c. Excrescences of the warty kind will always submit to repeated and persevering applications of BUTTER OF ANTIMONY, OIL OF VITRIOL, or any other escharotic, but they are not to be laid on with too liberal a hand. Wenny deep-seated substances (erroneously called excrescences) require very warm stimulants, and powerful spirituous applications, for a great length of time, before any expectation of repulsion or obliteration can be entertained.