CHAPTER III.
NOSTRUMS—ARSENIC AND ANTIMONY—HOOF-OINTMENTS—‘STOPPINGS.’
It is well known that all stablemen keep by them ‘nostrums’ and ‘receipts’ of their own. First amongst these are generally to be found arsenic and antimony—two active poisons—but they are great favourites with the men; they administer them in secret. These drugs are cheap, and they can afford (or will afford) to buy and pay for them themselves. It is true that occasionally they administer an overdose all round, generally on a Saturday night, and the next morning a stableful of dead horses is found; post-mortems are held, and the poison is discovered, and the horsekeeper finds himself before a magistrate. He sometimes gets imprisonment, it is also true; but this neither brings compensation to the owner, nor seems to act as a warning to others, for cases of drugging are constantly recurring at intervals. But, even if he does not kill the horses at a single dose, he is doing so by degrees. These very active remedies are but seldom employed even by veterinaries, and then only in extreme cases, and in small doses. Nitre is also cheap, and is
