The same author continues: "Some farmers bleed horses three or four times a year." We hope the farmers have too much good sense to follow the wicked example of the former. Frequent bleeding is an indirect mode of butchery--killing by inches; for it gives to the blood-vessels the power to contract and adapt themselves to the measure of blood that remains. It impoverishes the blood, and leads to hydrothorax, (accumulation of water in the chest,) and materially shortens life. Mackintosh says, "Some are bled who cannot bear it, and others who do not require it; and the result is death." The conservative power of life always operates in favor of health, and resists the encroachments upon her province with all her might, and often recovers the dominion; but by frequent bleedings, she is exhausted, and, on taking a little more blood than usual, the animal drops down and dies; and the owner attributes to disease what, in fact, is the result of bad treatment. "Patients who recover after general and copious bleedings have been employed, may attribute their recovery to the strength of their constitution. "If you should ask a modern _Sangrado_ what was most necessary in the treatment of disease, doubtless he would reply, 'Bleeding.' "Our modern pathologists, surgeons and others, think bleeding the _factotum_ in all maladies; it is the _ne plus ultra_, when drawn in large quantities. Blood-letting, say these authors, is not only the most powerful and important, but the most generally used, of all our remedies. Scarcely a case of acute, or, indeed, of chronic, disease occurs in which it does not become necessary to consider the propriety of having recourse to the lancet." (??) To what extent blood-letting is carried, in our modern age, may be learned by reading Youatt and others, who recommend it "when animals rub themselves, and the hair falls off; when the eyes appear dull and languid, red or inflamed; in all inflammatory complaints, as of the brain, lungs, kidneys, bowels, womb, bladder, and joints; in all bruises, hurts, wounds, and all other accidents; in cold, catarrh, paralysis, and locked-jaw." Yet, strange to say, one of these authors qualifies his recommendations as follows: "No man, however wise, can tell exactly how much blood ought to be taken in a given case." Now, it is well known that the draining of blood from a vein, though it diminishes the vital resistance, and lessens the volume of fluids, does not mend the matter; for it thus gives to cold and atmospheric agents the ascendant influence. A collapse takes place, the secretions become impaired, the animal refuses its food, "looks dumpish," &c.