It is to be observed, that persons taking out A CERTIFICATE, who are not qualified by former Acts to KILL GAME, derive no privilege from their certificate so to do; but, nevertheless, remain liable to all the penalties of former acts, if informed against, and prosecuted to conviction. It, however, appears, upon the experience of the last seven years, that since the privilege of killing game has contributed so largely to the exigencies of the State, less litigation has prevailed upon the score of PRESERVATION. Indeed, there is now so little fear of an information, that almost every person having taken out a certificate, erroneously considers himself nominally entitled TO KILL; in full confirmation of which, the list of those who have obtained certificates in the different counties, may be inspected at the Stamp Office, upon the payment of one shilling, where will be found the names of hundreds who do not individually possess an independent TWENTY POUNDS per annum upon the face of THE GLOBE.
In all cases where the penalty does not exceed 20l. the Justice of Peace shall, upon information or complaint, summon the party and witnesses to appear, and proceed to hear and determine the matter in a summary way; and, upon due proof, by confession, or the oath of one witness, give judgment for the forfeiture; and issue his warrant for levying the same on offenders goods, and to sell them, if not redeemed within six days; rendering to the party what overplus there may happen to be; and if goods sufficient are not found to answer the PENALTY, the offender shall stand committed TO PRISON for six calendar months, unless the penalty be sooner paid. Any offender feeling himself aggrieved by such judgment, may, upon giving security, amounting to the value of the forfeiture, with the costs of affirmance, APPEAL to the next general Quarter Sessions, when it is to be heard and finally determined; and in case the judgment be affirmed, Sessions may award such costs incurred by appeal as to themselves shall seem meet. Justices may mitigate penalties; so that the reasonable charges of officers and informers for discovery and prosecution, be always allowed over and above mitigation, and so as the same does not reduce the penalty to less than a moiety, over and above the costs and charges.
Restrictions for killing GAME are as follow: No PARTRIDGE to be killed between the 12th of February and 1st of September, under a penalty of FIVE POUNDS. No PHEASANT between the 1st of February and 1st of October, under the like penalty. Grouse, or RED GAME, only from August 12th to December 10th. Heath fowl, or BLACK GAME, from August 20th to December 10th. Bustards from December 1st to March 1st. No time is limited for the killing of HARES, provided they are not illegally taken. No GAME whatever is to be killed or taken sooner than ONE HOUR before SUN RISING, or later than ONE HOUR after SUN SET, under a penalty of 5l. to the qualified or unqualified. Killing game on Sunday, or Christmas-day, liable to the same penalty as killing game during the night.
Any unqualified person exposing a HARE, PHEASANT, PARTRIDGE, or other game, to sale, is liable to a penalty of 5l. For selling a HARE, PHEASANT, PARTRIDGE, or other game, qualified or unqualified, 5l. If either are found in the shop, house, or possession of any POULTERER, SALESMAN, FISHMONGER, COOK or PASTRY-COOK, or of any person not qualified in his own right to KILL GAME, or entitled thereto under some person so qualified, it shall be deemed an exposing thereof to sale.
Unqualified persons using any engine to kill or destroy HARES, PHEASANTS, PARTRIDGES, or other game, liable to a penalty of 5l. as well as keeping and using GREYHOUNDS, SETTING DOGS, or any engines to kill or destroy HARES, PHEASANTS, PARTRIDGES, or other game, are liable to a penalty of 5l. The keeping or using being individually or jointly liable to the forfeiture of 5l. as well as for killing, so it should appear, from the plain construction of the Acts, that if the informations are separately laid, first for "keeping and using," and secondly "for KILLING," conviction must inevitably follow for both, if sufficient evidence is produced to confirm the offence. Informations must be laid within SIX CALENDAR MONTHS, before a Justice of Peace, or by action of debt, bill, plaint, or information. The whole penalty to be given to the informer, with double costs, if brought on in Westminster Hall. Summary conviction, half to the informer, and half to the poor. These are the penalties annexed to former Acts, independent of the Act respecting annual certificates to be taken out from the Clerk of the Peace, to KILL (or go in pursuit of) GAME; without which, incurs an additional penalty of 20l. to the unqualified, making the forfeiture 25l. and of 20l. to the QUALIFIED, who becomes only liable to that single penalty, for killing, or attempting to kill, game without the annual certificate so prescribed to be taken out.
A QUALIFIED PERSON cannot come upon another man's ground to KILL GAME, without being liable to an ACTION for trespass; and an unqualified person for trespassing, shall pay full costs: but if a person qualified to kill game, sustains an ACTION for trespass, and the damage shall be found under 40s. he shall in such case pay no more COSTS than DAMAGES; this being a most equitable construction, to prevent paltry and personal litigations. It has been decided by the highest legal authority, that any unqualified person may go out to beat hedges, bushes, and mark birds, in company with any qualified person, to see the game pursued and taken, without being liable to any penalty, provided he has no DOG, GUN, or ENGINE, of his own, individually, to assist in its destruction.
It would be unfair to conclude this subject, which has for centuries occasioned such a diversity of opinions amongst the SUPERIOR CLASSES, and diffused so much discontent amongst the lower, without submitting to both, a very EMPHATIC and literal extract from Judge Blackstone, in his comment upon the Forest Laws, in which he has this particular passage.
"From a simple principle, to which, though the Forest Laws are now mitigated, and by degrees grown entirely obsolete, yet, from this root has sprung a bastard-slip, known by the name of the Game Laws, now arrived to, and wantoning in, its highest vigour; both founded upon the same unreasonable notions of permanent property in wild creatures, and productive of the same tyranny; but with this difference, that the Forest Laws established only one MIGHTY HUNTER throughout the land; the Game Laws have raised a little Nimrod in every manor."
GAMES of ART
—are those in which the skill, judgment, and penetration of the player are immediately concerned, and upon which alone his success must entirely depend. In this class are included Billiards, Chess, Draughts, Cricket, Fives, Tennis, Bowls, and some others, as well as a few upon the Cards; but as the latter are always subject to DECEPTION, and completely subservient to the slipping, sliding, and cutting of the most FAMILIAR FRIENDS, (even in private families,) they are, with propriety, much more entitled to the appellation of CHANCE than of ART, particularly where the unsuspecting player has the perpetual chance of being ROBBED, without the mortification of knowing the main-spring of depredation. However expert those may be, who indulge and excel in GAMES of ART, two things should ever be predominant in memory; always to play with an invariable philosophic PATIENCE and SERENITY, never to seem affected by a temporary run of ill-luck or momentary advantage, any more than agitated by the exulting irritation of a successful opponent. The run on one side may as suddenly be reversed to the other; a chance that petulance and ill-humour may probably destroy. Prudent players never engage in matches of any kind where four or more are concerned, except amongst their most intimate acquaintance; particularly at the public tables of the Metropolis, where it is the custom for three to poll one, and divide the spoils after the PIDGEON has been plucked; a very fashionable mode of playing at both BILLIARDS and WHIST; by which an infinity of necessitous and unprincipled adventurers procure a daily subsistence.
GAMES of CHANCE
.—Those games are so called, which depend solely upon the turning up of a CARD, or the uncertain "HAZARD of THE DIE." When fairly played, without any latent deception on one side or the other, they are considered truly equitable between the players, who are then said "to PLAY UPON THE SQUARE," without a point of advantage, the whole being dependent upon, and decided by, the EFFECT of CHANCE. The celebrated nocturnal game of Hazard, at which such immense property is annually LOST and WON, at the most fashionable and powerfully-supported GAMING HOUSES, is known to be the first and fairest GAME of CHANCE, upon which an adventurer (determined to encounter the probability of ruin) can possibly venture to STAKE HIS MONEY: on the contrary, it must be admitted, that the torrent of villainy, and unprincipled prostitution of affected integrity, have made such rapid and unprecedented strides to perfection, that the most experienced SPORTSMEN must despair of being enabled to play upon the square, after so many GAMBLERS of FASHION have, within a few years, been detected with loaded dice in their possession.
The game of E O, so plausibly deluding to all classes, particularly to rustics upon the different country COURSES and RACE GROUNDS, is the most deceptive, and most destructive, of any ever yet displayed for the purpose of public attraction; it may be very candidly placed in a parallel line with those low and rascally inventions of HUSTLING in the HAT, and PRICKING in the BELT, to both which an infinity of cunning countrymen become infatuated dupes, to the great emolument and gratification of that horde of miscreants, who subsist only upon the credulity and ignorance of the inexperienced, avaricious, and unsuspecting.
GANGRENE
—is a technical term, which in FARRIERY, as in SURGERY, implies the first stage of MORTIFICATION or PUTREFACTION.
GASCOIN, or GASKIN
,—of a horse, is that part of the hind quarter extending from the stifle (or inferior point of the thigh approaching the belly) to the bend of the hock behind; upon the shape, strength, and uniformity of which, the property, action, and excellence of the horse very much depends. If the GASKINS are wide, and divide below the tail in a curvilinear arch on the inside, with a prominent swell of the muscle on the outside, it is not only indicative of great strength, but adds considerably to the symmetry and value of the horse, when viewed behind. A horse well formed in the gaskins, is seldom badly shaped in the fore quarters; nor are they, in general, horses of inferior action; exclusive of which, they are insured from the very aukward DEFECT of cutting; no small inconvenience to a TRAVELLER with a weary horse upon a long journey.
GATE-NET
.—A GATE-NET is a principal part of the stock in trade of an expert and experienced POACHER; and, in respect to HARES, the most destructive nocturnal instrument that can be brought into use. They, at a certain hour in the dead of night, when hares are sure to be at feed, are fixed to the third bar of the gates of such fields as have green wheat, young clover, or any other where (by daily observation) they are known to use; when being fattened to the ground under the lower bar by means of wooden forked pegs, a lurcher is turned over the gate, who having been trained to the business, and running mute, scours the field in a circuitous direction; when the victims, thus suddenly and unexpectedly alarmed, make immediately for the gate, (by which they entered,) when the dog being close at their heels, at least not far behind them, they have no alternative, but to rush into the net, where becoming entangled, they meet their destruction. In this way three or four brace are taken in a plentiful country at one adventure. The only likely mode of rendering such attempts abortive, is by painting the lower bars of the gate white, which will occasion the hares to shun the gateway, and have recourse to their meuses; if GAME-KEEPERS and SPORTSMEN will but occasionally examine which, to take up the well-intended wires, it will, at any rate, go a great way towards preventing such incredible havoc and wholesale destruction.
GAZEHOUND
;—the name by which the species of DOG we now term GREYHOUND was formerly called. With what propriety an animal of almost every colour should be equally denominated grey, does not appear; any more than at what particular period the change in appellation may have taken place. As the pursuit of the GREYHOUND is entirely by sight, and not by scent, it should seem that GAZEHOUND would be the most proper distinction of the two, and that the present is no more than a perversion from the original.
GELDING
—implies a horse divested of his TESTICLES, by which he is deprived of the act of COPULATION, and of farther PROPAGATION. For particulars of the operation, see Castration.
GIFT of GOING
—is a phrase from the sublime vocabulary of the horse-dealing fraternity, and implies a horse's possessing a much greater portion of speed in action, particularly in TROTTING, than could well be expected from his shape and external appearance. When a horse is shewn for sale, having little to recommend him, rough in his coat, low in condition, aukward in shape, and without a single point of attraction, if he can scramble along at the rate of twelve or thirteen miles an hour, he is then said to possess the "gift of going," which is to compensate for every other deficiency.
GIMCRACK
,—the name of a horse who was of great celebrity upon the turf, and for two or three years beat most of his time. He was foaled in 1760; got by Cripple, (a son of the Godolphin Arabian;) dam by Grisewood's Partner, and his pedigree was of the best blood; but being too small for a stallion of eminence, produced no winners of note. He was followed by young Gimcrack, a good horse for GIVE and TAKE PLATES, particularly at four heats.
GINGER
—is an aromatic spicy root, brought to us from the East and West Indies, in a preserved as well as in its natural state. In the former it is used as a stomachic and sweetmeat by the superior orders: in the latter it is common in all the shops, consisting of flat-knotted branches, of which the whitest, and least stringy or fibrous, are the best. It is a very useful ingredient in many compositions for the internal diseases of horses, particularly in the FLATULENT CHOLIC, commonly called FRET. Houses in the country, remote from towns, where horses are used and fed upon peas haum, and other winter fodder, frequently producing such disorders, should never be without a small quantity of this article: two ounces bruised, and boiled in ALE or GRUEL, then drained off, and the liquor given with a horn, would prove an excellent substitute for medicine upon many emergencies.
GIGS
;—a term almost obsolete for what are now called FLAPS, a kind of flaccid fleshy enlargement on each side a horse's jaw, which, in his mastication, frequently falling between the grinders, is productive of pain, and prevents the horse from eating. If they are long and thin, they may be completely taken off by a pair of scissars, and the wounds washed with a strong solution of alum in water: if they are too fleshy and substantial for this mode of extirpation, they may be slightly scarified with a BISTORY, or ABSCESS LANCET, and after having been left to bleed for a proper length of time, may be stopped, and the parts constringed by the solution already described.
GIRTHS
—are those well-known articles made from woollen web, and used for keeping the saddle in a safe and proper position. These, to prevent GALLING, should be made of ELASTIC, and not the tight wove web, which being more rigid and harsh, is the more likely to LACERATE during the heat and friction of a long chase. Observation should be made that girths are never too short, so as to have the buckle below the pad of the saddle, either on one side or the other; for want of which judicious and sportsman-like attention, WARBLES, SITFASTS, and WOUNDS, very frequently ensue.
GIVE and TAKE PLATES
—are those where the HORSES carry WEIGHT according to their HEIGHT, by the regulated standard of four inches to a HAND. The fixed rules for a GIVE and TAKE are, that horses measuring FOURTEEN HANDS, are each to carry nine stone; above or below which height, they are to carry seven pounds, more or less, for every inch they are HIGHER or LOWER than the FOURTEEN HANDS fixed as the criterion.—Example: a horse measuring FOURTEEN HANDS, one inch and a half, will carry nine stone, ten pounds, eight ounces; a horse measuring THIRTEEN HANDS, two inches and a half, will carry only eight stone, three pounds, eight ounces; the former being one inch and a half above the FOURTEEN HANDS, the other one inch and a half below it. The weight is, therefore, added, or diminished, by the eighths of every inch, higher or lower weight in proportion; and these PLATES were so exceedingly popular some few years since, that very few country courses were without one of this description.
GLANDERS
—is, perhaps, without exception, the most dreadful, and certainly destructive, disease to which the horse is incident. No exertions have been wanting on the part of the most eminent professional men (particularly in France) to discover the means of successfully counteracting the justly-dreaded virulence of this disorder; but hitherto with so little the appearance of progress, that it is almost an invariable custom to render the subject an immediate VICTIM to DEATH, so soon as he is ascertained to have become the VICTIM of DISEASE. There are never wanting SPECULATORS, or SPECULATIVE WRITERS, so long as "a doubt remains to hang a loop upon;" and many of these both speak and write as prompted by their pecuniary sensations, and the sale of the NOSTRUM it is their personal interest to promote. These, of course, promulgate not the probability, but the certainty, of cure, and may, in so doing, possibly prey upon the credulity of those who are equally strangers to the origin of this disease, its progress, its effects, or its termination.
After the great variety of opinions which have taken place; after all the investigations made by every class of the most diligent inquirers in anatomical dissections, as well as by various other means, three facts are incontrovertibly established: first, that the disease is INFECTIOUS; secondly, that it is CURABLE; and lastly, that the LUNGS of every HORSE dying under the disorder, or killed during its progress, have been either partially, or totally, destroyed. This demonstrated beyond the power of contradiction, what does it prove? Why, very clearly, to the judicious and scientific, who are inquisitive to experience, and open to conviction, that this disorder is in direct affinity to the PULMONARY CONSUMPTION of the HUMAN SPECIES; but that the horse having no means of throwing off the morbid matter by expectoration, as is the case with us, Nature, in her strong and inexplicable efforts for relief, propels the putrid discharge through the nostrils of the animal; whereas with the HUMAN FRAME, the wasting of the lungs passes through, and is discharged by, the mouth; and this, to the experienced practitioner, and learned inquirer, will hold forth the most unequivocal and satisfactory proof, that the GLANDERS is a virulent CONSUMPTION of THE LUNGS, by the corrosive property of which discharge (become inveterate) the glandular passages are proportionally affected.
Much judicious observation, and professional knowledge, is requisite to discriminate between this disease, and others bearing a part of its appearances: many horses are too hastily deemed GLANDERED, which are not so; and others as ignorantly said to be labouring under A COLD, and its consequence, till a whole stable has been affected, and every horse lost. The distinguishing traits are a discharge from one or both nostrils, of a viscid, slimy, and fœtid matter, having a kind of greasy tinge upon the surface: it is glutinous in its property, hanging to, and becoming dry and barky, upon the internal edges of the nostrils: it is white at the beginning, and grows darker in proportion to the duration and inveteracy of the disease; it becomes yellow, ash-colour, green, and lastly, tinged with blood, at which time, as well as before, it is dreadfully offensive: previous to this stage, indurated tumefactions have taken place under the jaws, the frame is daily more and more emaciated, the eyes sink gradually in their orbits, the appetite totally ceases, the body becomes almost motionless, seeming a mere lifeless trunk, till it falls to the ground a mass of perfect putrefaction.
GNAWPOST
—was a country PLATE HORSE of some celebrity, winning several for some years in succession. He was bred by Mr. Shaftoe; was foaled in 1767; and got by Snap out of Miss Cranbourne, who was got by the Godolphin Arabian, and bred by the then great Duke of Cumberland.
GOLDFINDER
;—the name of one of the molt valuable and successful horses ever bred or trained in this kingdom: he beat nearly every horse of his time, and won almost every stakes he started for. He was bred by Mr. Shaftoe; foaled in 1764; got by Snap; dam by Blank; grand-dam by Regulus, and the six preceding generations by Arabians, Barbs, and Turks, up to the natural Barb mare, constituting one of the richest pedigrees in the annals of RACING BLOOD.
GODOLPHIN ARABIAN
—was the property of Lord Godolphin, and produced more capital winners as A STALLION, than any horse that covered before his time in this kingdom. His progeny became equally eminent as stallions, to the whole of which are we principally indebted for the unprecedented eminence and superiority of the various studs so plentifully established in different parts of the country. He was the sire of Cade, Regulus, Blank, Babraham, Bajazet, and a long list of et ceteras. See Barbs.
"GONE AWAY!"
—is the exhilarating communicative HOLLOA! from one sportsman to another in STAG or FOX hunting, when the game breaks from large coverts, and goes away; at which time, if it was not for this friendly rule, invariably observed, those who happen to be up the wind, would be inevitably thrown out, and the hounds have got miles, before the most distant part of the field knew any thing of the matter. To prevent the mortifying probability of which, those nearest the chace and the hounds, instantly vociferate the enlivening signal of, "GONE AWAY!". This being repeated by the next in succession, it is re-echoed by a third, and so on till it vibrates through the whole chain; and it must be acknowledged, there is not a more gratifying moment in the progress of a chase, than to see the distant effort of every individual, to recover his lost ground, and get in with the hounds.
GORGED
;—the common and vulgar term for swelled legs, when their enlarged and distended state has been occasioned more by severe and hard work, than the effect of HUMOURS originating in a fizey or morbid state of the blood. A horse having his back sinews flushed, and legs thickened, so as to go short and stiff in action, but not broken down, is said to be gorged. Having the same appearances from humours, or a viscidity of the blood, he is then said to be foul, and must be relieved by PURGATIVES or DIURETICS, assisted by a great deal of hand-rubbing and regular friction. Gorged horses should be blistered, and turned out in time, by which they frequently get fresh again: continued at work too long, they break down, and become cripples.
GOULARD
.—The article so well known by this name, and so constantly brought into use upon many emergencies, is the EXTRACT of LEAD; which is prepared by, and may be obtained of, almost every druggist in the kingdom. Its excellent properties are universally admitted as a CORROBORANT, a REPELLENT, a SOLVENT, and an almost infallible remedy in well-proportioned topical applications to inflammations, strains, bruises, or recent tumefactions: but some degree of professional knowledge, and experimental practice, is necessary to insure a probable certainty of effect. Upon the first discovery of this article, it was brought into use in very small quantities, and a teaspoonful or two only were directed to be added to a quart of spring water, which was then termed Vegeto Mineral Water, and in certain cases (particularly of the eyes) looked up to as A SPECIFIC. Long experience, and attentive observation, have, however, justified its utility in much larger proportions, particularly with HORSES; where, in severe strains, or long-standing lamenesses, less than four ounces to a pint of CAMPHORATED spirits cannot be brought into use with any expectation of success.——As a mild repellent to SWELLINGS, BRUISES, WARBLES, &c. two ounces of the extract, two ounces of camphorated spirits, and a pint of water, will be a proper proportion. In defluxions and inflammation of the eyes, one ounce of each, with a pint and half of water, will be found a very useful composition.
GOURDINESS
—is another rustic or provincial term for SWELLED LEGS, but of a different description, implying the kind of dropsical laxity of the SOLIDS, submitting to pressure, and recovering from its indentation when the pressure is removed. This kind of swelling is a gradual approach to the disorder called GREASE, at which it will soon arrive, if not counteracted speedily, by such EVACUANTS and ALTERATIVES as may be thought most applicable to the case.
GRASS
—is that well-known produce of the earth, which is the proper food for horses in a state of NATURE, EASE, and INDOLENCE; but not of sufficient nutritive property for horses engaged in either SEVERE, LABORIOUS, or ACTIVE exertions. Horses taken up from grass, and put suddenly to work, labour under an immediate and perceptible disquietude; the contents of the intestines are soon evacuated in a STATE of LAXITY, the frame displays a profusion of FOUL and FŒTID PERSPIRATION, the body bespeaks its own DEBILITY, and the perseverance of a few days demonstrates its EMACIATION. To horses having been whole months in constant use and work, alternately accustomed to diurnal drudgery, and the routine of the manger, GRASS, with its conjunctive LIBERTY, must prove a sweet, a comfortable, a proper, and a healthy change: it not only, by its own attenuating property, proportionally alters the PROPERTY of the BLOOD, but affords, by the comforts of EASE and EXPANSION, a renovation of elasticity and vigour to the relaxed sinews, the exhausted spirits, and the battered frame.
To the penurious and the unfeeling (equally insensible) it is sufficient, that a horse, worn to the bone with constant work, and want of food, is "TURNED TO GRASS" in the winter, when there is none to be eaten; or during the months of July and August, when a horse loses more FLESH by persecution from flies (if not well protected by shade, accommodated with plenty of water, and an equal plenty of grass) than he can acquire by any advantage arising from LIBERTY alone; which some people seem to conceive all that is required, and that the poor animal, Camelion like, "can live upon the air." It should be recollected, that in the animal œconomy, substance only can beget substance, (see Aliment;) and no horse will be likely to accumulate flesh, or become FAT, whose means of living are poor.
Impoverished rushy moors, and lank half-rotten autumn grass, (particularly after wet summers,) will prove much more likely to produce DISEASE, than produce CONDITION. Those who turn out horses to grass with a cough upon them, particularly if from a WARM STABLE in a cold season, may expect to take them up with a short, husky, laboured asthmatic increase of the original complaint, or with tubercles formed upon the lungs; and those who turn out in the winter season, with a hope of obtaining the cure of CRACKED HEELS, or SWELLED LEGS, may probably take up with a confirmed GREASE, particularly if the constitution should lean a little to blood, and pedigree of that description.
The utility and advantages of physic were never better understood, or more clearly ascertained, than at the present moment of general improvement: experienced sportsmen, and rational observers, however doubtful they may have been, are now convinced of its propriety, and never deviate from its practice. They invariably cleanse at the end of the HUNTING SEASON, and repeat the ceremony after taking their horses up from grass, previous to getting them into condition. Let those who doubt the consistency, try the experiment, and they will be soon convinced, how little one will be enabled to stand a WINTER'S WORK with the other.
GRAVELLED
.—A horse is said, by the lower classes, to be GRAVELLED, when broken particles of flints, or small pebbles, are insinuated between the outer SOLE of the FOOT and the WEB of the SHOE. This injury is seldom sustained, but where the shoe is formed too flat upon the inner surface, (without its proper protecting concavity,) when pressing too close, whatever extraneous substance gains admission, is there confined, and, from the stricture, has no possible chance of extrication. The degree of pain, or tenderness, depends entirely upon the mildness or severity of the case, and the length of its duration. The road to relief is the same; the shoe should be tenderly taken off, by one nail at a time, in preference to tearing it off by main and sudden force, (according to custom;) the sole should be well fomented with good hot milk and water, then covered with an EMOLLIENT POULTICE of linseed powder, milk, and two table spoonsful of olive oil, letting the same be repeated daily, till the inflammation has subsided, and the tenderness gone off; when the bottom of the hoof may be hardened by two or three applications of a sponge dipt in vinegar boiling hot before THE SHOE is replaced.
GREASE
.—The GREASE is a disorder particularly affecting the CART or DRAFT HORSES of this country, but is seldom or rarely observed amongst horses of a superior description: its seat is cutaneous, and it first discovers itself by a stagnation of the fluids, and as consequent inflammatory enlargement above and about the fetlock, attended with pain and stiffness, more or less, according to the state of the subject, or the severity of the attack. If proper means are not immediately taken, and judiciously persevered in, a degree of virulence, much trouble, and tedious attendance, unavoidably ensue. The skin, by its preternatural distension, soon assumes a greasy kind of transparency, having an irregular scaly appearance upon the surface, from whence (particularly when put into action) exudes a thin oily ICHOR, which, when become of long duration, is frequently tinged WITH BLOOD, but always of a filthy unctuous property, and greasy to the touch.
As it advances in unrestrained progress, it increases the growth of the hoof around THE CORONET, rendering it of a soft, spongy, and diseased appearance: by the corrosive and fœtid property of the discharge, it soon affects and putrifies THE FROG, which it centrically corrodes, and lays the foundation of CANKER in the FOOT. As it becomes more inveterate, so it proportionally extends itself, and affects the surrounding parts; the small apertures from whence the ferous ichor originally oozed, now become malignant ULCERS, intersected by warty excrescences, and watery bladders of a poisonous appearance. Arrived by length of time, want of care, and probably by the use of improper medicines, or injudicious treatment, at this its second stage, it assumes a more formidable appearance, and every symptom, as well as the limb, continues to increase: what were before only CADAVEROUS ULCERS, now become (in a partial degree) barky eschars, intermixed with growing tetters, from amidst which trickles down, in smoaking heat, the acrimonious sanies, or corrupted matter, which seems to excoriate as it passes, and soon deprives the part of hair; the little that is left serving only as so many conductors, from whence flows in streams the morbid matter, now become so truly offensive, that a horse, in such state, should be separated from others, lest fumes so incredibly noxious should, from the miasma, lay the foundation of disease with horses perfectly sound.
The GREASE may originate in either an INTERNAL or an external cause; as well as be transmitted by hereditary taint (of SIRE or DAM) from one generation to another. An impure and acrimonious state of the blood, unattended to till it has acquired morbid malignity, must display itself in some part; and with horses of the kind described, it generally appears in the extremities, where the CIRCULATION is languid, and the least able to make RESISTANCE. Horses too long continued in MOORS of long lanky grass, intermixed with rushes, or in MARSHY MEADOWS of a swampy soil, where, in the dreary months of autumn and WINTER, their heels are never dry for weeks together, is a very probable foundation of permanent GREASE, or some other CHRONIC complaint, the original cause of which is seldom adverted to, perhaps never recollected. Cutaneous disorders not properly eradicated by MERCURIALS or ANTIMONIALS, but injudiciously thrown upon the circulation by REPELLENTS; the sudden absorption of a plentiful flow of milk, when a colt is taken from the dam; an extreme plethora, with a fizey viscidity of the blood; or any of those causes which too much relax the texture of THE SOLIDS, or impoverish and stagnate THE FLUIDS, may be more immediately or remotely productive of this disease.
External causes also frequently give rise to its appearance; a sudden check to perspiration by change of weather, or change of situation, from one stable to another; or from either to the external air, by turning out to grass from a warm and comfortable stable, unfavourably followed by a succession of cold nights, bleak winds, and rainy weather; washing the heels in hard well water after profuse perspiration; standing too constantly upon stale and filthy dung, for days and nights, impregnated with urine, so evidently prejudicial to the feet and frogs. Horses fed upon grains are remarked to be much subject to the disorder in a slight degree, and this tendency is probably strengthened by a want of cleanly attention, or a little assistance from medicinal counteraction.
Much mischief is frequently occasioned by the rash and injudicious interposition of some illiterate practitioner, who, with a degree of self-cunning, (peculiar to professional ignorance,) piques himself upon the superiority of his art, and confidently proceeds to oppose the predominant efforts which Nature has been induced to make for her OWN RELIEF. Influenced by the deceptive impression of imaginary success, he begins with mild repellents, drying washes, sharp waters, strong astringents, then styptics, and lastly MERCURIAL or VITRIOLIC caustics and escharotics, where having reached the utmost extent of his fertile faculties, he is surprized, but not MORTIFIED, at finding what he erroneously thought a remedy has proved TEN TIMES WORSE than the original disease. The Grease, upon its first appearance, is, by a proper course of medicine, and judicious management, very easily subdued, and radically cured. In its second stage, great PATIENCE and PERSEVERANCE is required; and no expence should be spared, or necessary means omitted. In the third and last, DEATH is preferable to any attempt at cure.