The illustrated horse doctor : $b being an accurate and detailed account of the various diseases to which the equine race are subjectedMayhew, Edward
Science
The illustrated horse doctor : $b being an accurate and detailed account of the various diseases to which the equine race are subjected
Mayhew, Edward
Horses -- Diseases
The prejudices of ignorance are subjects for pity; the slothfulness of the
better educated merits reprobation. The groom always gets the master's
sanction before he takes a horse to be cruelly tortured for an imaginary
disease. Into the hands of the proprietor has a Higher Power intrusted
the life of His creature; and surely there shall be demanded a strict
account of the stewardship. It can be no excuse for permitting the living
sensation to be abused, that a groom asked and the master willingly left
his duties to another. Man has no business to collect breathing life
about him and then to neglect it. Every human being who has a servant, a
beast or a bird about his homestead, has no right to rest content with
the assertions of his dependents. For every benefit he is bound to confer
some kindness. His liberality should testify to his superiority; but he
obviously betrays his trust and abuses the blessings of Providence when he
permits the welfare of the creatures, dependent on him, to be controlled
by any judgment but his own.
The author will not describe the mode of firing for lampas. It is
sufficient here to inform the reader that the operation consists in
burning away the groom's imaginary prominences upon the palate. The
living and feeling substance within a sensitive and timid animal's mouth
is actually consumed by fire. He, however, who plays with such tools as
red-hot irons cannot say, "thus far shalt thou go." He loses all command
when the fearful instrument touches the living flesh: the palate has
been burnt away, and the admirable service performed by the bars, that
of retaining the food during mastication, destroyed. The bone beneath
the palate has been injured; much time and much money have been wasted
to remedy the consequence of a needless barbarity, and, after all, the
horse has been left a confirmed "wheezer." The animal's sense being
confused, and its brain agitated by the agony, the lower jaw has closed
spasmodically upon the red-hot iron; and the teeth have seized with the
tenacity of madness upon the heated metal.
When the lampas is reported to you, refuse to sanction so terrible a
remedy; order the horse a little rest, and cooling or soft food. In short,
only pursue those measures which the employment of the farrier's cure
would have rendered imperative, and, in far less time than the groom's
proposition would have occupied, the horse will be quite well and once
more fit for service.
INJURIES TO THE JAW.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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