PURGING
—is an operation with horses, upon the propriety, consistency, danger, and utility of which, various opinions have been opposed to each other for half a century past; these, after the public experience of the last fourteen years, seem to have centered in an acknowledged preponderation of its occasional use; and that without its frequent salutary introduction, certain diseases are neither to be prevented or cured. The absolute necessity for sometimes PURGING, is not only now universally admitted, but the practice as generally adopted; the first step to a successful termination of which operation is, to adapt (by every possible degree of precaution) the strength of the physic to the size, state, and constitution of the HORSE, as well as an eye to the particular cause for which the purgation is become necessary. Proper attention paid to these leading circumstances, and due care observed during its process, no apprehensions of danger need be at all entertained.
It is necessary those who have not been accustomed to the management of horses under so serious an operation, should know, that, from the great length of the intestinal canal, a horse requires a considerable decree of cathartic stimulus to insure excremental expulsion. When the contents of the larger intestines are become indurated by long retention, little work, and a want of exercise, there is then a kind of constitutional tendency to constipation, when, of course, more disquietude or pain will be experienced by the subject, than when the body is in a more favourable and less costive state. The intestines (when extended) exceeding thirty yards in length, and laying compressed in a horizontal position within the frame, and in so small a compass, is the principal, and almost only, reason to be advanced, why the combination of purgative ingredients continue from eighteen to twenty-four hours in the frame, before the fæces are sufficiently softened for the operation to begin.
Exclusive of the various disorders to which horses are subject, requiring a course of physic upon their first appearance, or at their termination, (as may be collected from the works of those who have written professedly upon the subject,) there are many instances, in which PURGING may be very advantageously brought into use, as a critical PREVENTIVE to DISEASE, although there may, at the time, be but little external cause to believe such morbidity is impending. Horses constantly standing in a stable upon full and good keep, with but very little work, and short exercise, generate blood freely, and lose a very trifling proportion of the constantly accumulating contents of the frame, by either perspiration or evacuation. Thus then the vessels, as well as the carcase, become so evidently overloaded, that the whole labours under the rigidity of one universal distension; constituting a preternatural stricture upon the body and its extremities, by which the system of secretion and excretion is partially or universally affected, and the regular routine of the ANIMAL ŒCONOMY proportionally deranged. Under this concise, but explanatory, definition of repletion, and its effects, will be found the necessity for occasionally unloading the body by proper evacuants, and relieving the vessels from the unnatural stricture which reduces the elasticity of the solids, and retards or obstructs the easy circulation of their contents.
PURITY
—was a mare of distinguished celebrity originally, but rendered much more so, as the dam of the famous horse Rockingham, whose performances will be found under that head. Purity was bred by Mr. Pratt; foaled in 1774, and got by Matchem out of the old Squirt mare. She was the dam of Rockingham, Archibald, Fitzwilliam, and a filly by Highflyer; as well as others by Florizel, Magnet, Paymaster, and Saltram. Her dam (the old Squirt mare) produced many racers of the first class: Virgin, Miracle, Dido, Conundrum, Ranthos, Enigma, Riddle, Miss Tims, Pumpkin, Maiden, Rasselas, Purity, and three others; having continued to breed from 1755 to 1774; during which period of nineteen years, she produced the fifteen colts and fillies here described.
PURSIVENESS
—is a disorder, or degree of disease, with a difficulty of respiration, beyond the effect of a common cold and cough, but falling short of the malady denominated BROKEN WIND. Pursiveness in a horse bears no ill affinity to the asthmatic complaints of the human species. Although there have been refined distinctions adopted, and definitions attempted, between the symptoms of a cold and the disorder called pursiveness in a horse, yet one is very little more or less than an inveterate stage of the other. The blood having, from some particular cause, become sizey, has consequently passed through the finer vessels with a languor far inferior to the purposes of health; hence obstructions are first formed; and these continuing to increase, tubercles follow. The parts necessary to a free and easy respiration being thus affected, it becomes laborious and oppressive in a proportional degree with the increasing viscidity of the blood, and the length of time it has been permitted to continue in its progress without restraint. The finer vascular ramifications of the lungs being thus partially closed, imperfect respiration ensues; producing those whistling wheezings with which ASTHMATIC horses are observed to be distressed, particularly in brisk action, until it progressively terminates in broken wind, which it will inevitably do, unless the proper means of alleviation and cure are earnestly adopted. Frequent bleedings, pectoral detergents, intervening attenuants, and mercurial purging balls, (administered with patient and punctual perseverance,) are the only medical aids from which permanent relief must be expected, or can be obtained.