The management and treatment of the horse in the stable, field, and ...

34 The Management and Treatment of the Horse,
men, and enables them to ride their hobby-horses and air
them at almost every dinner-table, by a never-failing
discourse about their fools of grooms, who have let their
horses get the influenza, or have thrown their horses down
and broken their knees. The groom always throws the
horse down, the horse always falls down with the master.
A gentleman once went to the late Mr. Field, veterinary
surgeoD, of Oxford-street, and told him his groom had
thrown his horse down, and he had discharged him. Mr.
Field asked, " Did your man throw it down ? " and was
answered, " Yes, decidedly ;
" to which Mr Field replied,
" Then when you have done with your man have the
kindness to send him to me ;
I will find him employment;
he will be very valuable to me, as I often want a horse
thrown down, and have to employ five or six men to do
it. As your man can throw a horse by himself, if I give
him good wages, it will be a saving to me. I have no
doubt, Captain, that if the horse had come down with
you, you would have found a reason to account for it."
The veterinary surgeon prescribes medicine for his
patient, but he is not sure that the medicine is given at
proper times, or even given at all. The chances are if
the horse is at all awkward he never gets it at all, and
another great danger is that the reasoning power of the
groom who knows nothing about the effects of drugs will
lead him to reason that if ten drops will do any good,
forty drops must do four times as much, so down go
four doses at once, and when the veterinary surgeon calls
next day he either finds the horse dead or the symptoms
greatly aggravated. Although, as a class, the groom is
considered ignorant and illiterate, yet there are many