This most painful affliction is only known in the horse as the consequence of some poisonous substance being swallowed. Poisoning entire teams of valuable horses has followed the use of certain powders, these being mixed with the corn; the intention was to improve the personal appearance of the animals to which the drug was administered. Carters have a large faith in condition powders, and a distant belief in the _magic_ of medicine; in their ignorance, they spend their hard-earned wages to procure the stuff, too often compounded of agents which never should be trusted in the hands of the uneducated. The men argue, if these powders, say one spoonful given each night, will make the horse bloom in a fortnight, two spoonfuls must do the same thing in a week; the spoonful possibly contains the utmost limits of the dose; that quantity exceeded may endanger or destroy life. But ignorance is always impatient; it ever desires the speediest results; and if accident attends its eagerness, indignation should be visited upon those who put responsible trusts in such keeping; upon the men who for gain sell poisonous drugs to the obviously uninformed. Books and charts are published, explaining the various antidotes and tests to be employed for the detection and counteraction of the different poisons. Such authorities are of little service in the stable; the tests require care and time for their application; the symptoms are mostly so urgent as to permit no leisure for scientific inquiry. In an acute case, dependence must be placed on general principles, and fortune must be relied on to guide the result. Certain poisons act instantaneously and without any warning sufficiently energetic to be interpreted, as the twigs or leaves of the yew-tree. Other agents immediately establish the lesson which sometimes speedily kills, but more often produces consequences which will ultimately destroy life, though death may be some time before it occurs, as the mineral acids, etc. The presence of particular kinds is announced only by violent disorder, as powerful diuretics and potent purgatives. The symptoms, therefore, are not decided; the carter has his motives for silence, and the inability of the horse to vomit forbids the earliest announcement of deranged stomach. The time for antidotes has generally passed before attention is excited; to support the life, in the hope that it may survive the destroyer, is evidently the best thing which can, under such circumstance, be adopted. Chloroform, ether, and opium render the body insensible, and, by sparing the nervous system, certainly existence will be prolonged. Purgatives had better be withheld they may already have been administered in enormous doses; fearful amounts of aloes destroy life without purgation being exhibited.