The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2): Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the FieldTaplin, William
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The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2): Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the Field
Taplin, William
Hunting -- Dictionaries; Sports -- Dictionaries
STRANGLES—is a disorder to which young horses in general are always
liable, and few or none escape, any more than children escape the
small-pox, hooping-cough, or measles. It first displays itself in a
heaviness of the head, a dulness of the eyes, a reluctance to action, a
heat in the mouth, and a gradually declining appetite: this is followed
by a swelling in the concavity beneath the under jaw, which being
centrical, is sometimes surrounded by two or three tumefactions of
smaller formation. These, in their progress to maturation, are
frequently slow, and require patient perseverance in external
application; for in all cases of suppuration, NATURE may be _led_, but
will never be _driven_. During the time the matter is forming, and
progressively getting into a state of concoction, an _internal_ soreness
of the _throat_ correspondingly comes on, and is followed by an almost
or total refusal of food. When it is ascertained that STRANGLES is the
true face of the disorder, care must be taken to avoid bleeding, and
every kind of medical evacuants, which would tend to embarrass Nature in
her own efforts, and protract the crisis of disease; upon which the very
safety of the horse, and his expeditious cure, entirely depend.
The strangles is a disorder standing in much greater need of nursing,
and constant stable attendance, than the least medical interposition:
the system requires to be kept up by art, and every nutritious attention
in proportion as the appetite has been observed to decline. In its
earliest stage, no attempt whatever should be made at repulsion, (by
external astringents, or any spirituous application whatever;) on the
contrary, hot emollient fomentations to the part, (with two sponges dipt
in the decoction alternately for a quarter of an hour daily,) followed
directly with stimulative poultices of a proper heat, _repeated_ and
_patient_ offers of gruel and sweet-wort, mixed a little warm in a pail
perfectly clean, and free from grease. Small quantities of mash
(prepared of ground malt and bran, equal parts) should, at proper
intervals, be placed in the manger: these and the gruel being constantly
refused, the case will then require the additional adoption of a
pectoral cordial ball, to be dissolved in a pint of gruel, and mildly
insinuated about a third part with the horn at each time, till the whole
is got down; and this should be repeated three times in every
twenty-four hours, till the tumor is broke, and the crisis arrives; when
which is observed, if the aperture is too small, it may be a little
enlarged with the point of any instrument, that the matter may the more
easily run off. To promote this, the poultice, covering a pledget of
digestive ointment, should be continued for two or three days, when a
cure is soon effected. Two or three doses of physic, or a course of
alteratives, is always necessary after this disease.
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