Part 8

57. _The tricks, that are practised on the teeth_, are so much talked about and so generally feared, that the subject demands a few words in explanation. The breeders are known to extract the milk teeth, hoping thereby to hasten the growth of the permanent incisors, and to increase the apparent age of the colt. The gums they are likewise known to touch with the hot iron, or to freely lance for the same purpose. All of these practices are common enough; but that they accomplish the design of the persons who employ them is not at all certain. By either of these practices the animal is pained, and pain does not favour development, but, on the contrary, retards it. The suffering, however, may be brief, yet the effect does not stop there. If the milk tooth is firm in the mouth, when the attempt is made to extract it, in nineteen cases out of twenty, it will be broken and the fang left in the jaw. When the extraction of the milk teeth has been general, I have seen numbers of horses, with the broken fangs in their mouths, palpable evidences that the animals have been tampered with. But, supposing all of the tooth to be removed, nothing would be thereby gained. The permanent tooth does not push out the temporary; nor does the temporary, so directly obstruct the coming up of the permanent, as to render its presence or absence of much consequence. If the fang be removed, there may be nothing to absorb, but on that account it does not follow that there will be anything more deposited. The body of a man does not grow larger because one or more of his limbs have been amputated. On the contrary, the shock occasioned to the system by the operation, and the consequence ensuing on the loss of blood, may cause an immediate diminution of the frame. So, if a horse's tooth be drawn, the animal is alarmed, tortured--and, if the creature recovers from these effects very speedily, so that no loss of growth could be estimated, certainly the most favourable circumstances would not allow us to imagine any stimulus to development had been created. There will be some loss of blood, and this, however slight it may be, nevertheless being taken from the immediate part, must act as a local depletion. Now to deplete is to check growth by abstracting the very source of nutriment. The hemorrhage, however small, must be injurious; and the mouth being made more or less sore, the inclination to feed, as a natural consequence, is diminished, thereby further checking the development. I cannot see in what manner the extraction of the milk teeth is to hasten the growth of the permanent incisors; but I can perceive that the operation may have the opposite effect; and I have known the practice to have been followed by the non-appearance of the very tooth, the protrusion of which through the gum, it was employed to quicken. The tooth, which previously seemed to be on the eve of piercing the gum, after the extraction of the milk incisor never came up,--nor will any person who has thought for an instant, wonder if the violence, necessarily used, does occasionally injure or rupture the delicate vessels and gelatinous tissues of the pulp. More often the breeder's impatient interference breaks the tooth off at the neck and leaves the fang in the jaw. This he has not the skill to extract, and as it is not afterwards absorbed but speedily assumes a dark colour, it remains a tell-tale and an eye-sore during the life of the animal. Had the colt been left alone, the fang in a few months would, by the natural process, have been absorbed: but the force which broke the tooth, though incapable of extracting it, probably ruptured the delicate tubes of the absorbent vessels. The broken member is left in the mouth, either to act as a foreign body, or to become united by anchylosis to the jaw, and continue for life a deformity. The folly of the practice will surely on reflection be evident to all; and the other means employed for the same end are in a like degree injurious. The breeder will consult his own interest best by studying the feelings of his animals. For the sake of profit, if not for the love of humanity, he had better cease to torture the poor beasts by which he hopes to gain. Suffering will neither engender spirit, growth, or fat, and the market pays price for each of these. The mouth of the horse is too important towards the value of the animal to be ignorantly mutilated. Let the mind reflect, before the hand is permitted even to use the lancet. To lance the gums of the human infant was once a favourite practice; nor has the custom at the present time fallen quite into disuse, but it is generally resorted to only during the cutting of the primary teeth, and not commonly adopted to facilitate the appearance of those teeth which the horse-dealer employs it to quicken. In the latter case, on man the gum lancet is not employed; and, if found useless on one animal, a strong inference is created as to the inutility of constantly experimentalizing with the instrument upon another. By incising the gums a wound is created, the part is thickened, and a cicatrix induced; the effects of which are to cause an impediment to the growing tooth; and this being seen and corroborated by practical observation, the best dentists and surgeons of the present day are not very enthusiastic in the use of the gum lancet, which they have in a great measure cast aside, and which is beneficial only in scientific hands. The loss of blood likewise is to be considered, and that certainly aids in retarding the growth, which the adoption of the other means, general with the breeders of horses, could not accelerate. The employment of the cautery, to expedite the appearance of the teeth, is so strange a resort, that I can only account for the use of that agent by imagining certain persons to be totally ignorant of its action. In the first place, it destroys the part with which it comes in contact; inflammation follows and suppuration ensues; a quantity of blood is diverted to the surface, and of course drawn from the pulp of the new tooth, which originally it flowed to and nurtured. A slough must take place, and the mouth remain sore till the escar is thrown off and the exposed granulating surface cicatrized. But wherever the hot iron is applied the immediate part is thickened, rendered more hard and tense. Which of these effects is it the horse-dealer regards as likely to promote his wishes? A little knowledge would inform any one, that the cautery must act in the opposite direction to that, which it is supposed, by ignorant people, to favour. Indeed, I do not think, that horse-dealers or others have yet obtained so great a mastery over nature, that the dame can be made to hurry at their bidding, however cruelly their orders may be enforced. A "Yorkshire five" may sound well, but there is no more possibility of making a four-year old colt, by barbarity, show the development of a five-year old horse, than there is, by wrenching, cutting, and burning, of making a boy of fifteen look like a man of twenty. Nature obeys her own laws, and is not yet subjected to human practices. Careful rearing, nutritious food, sufficient exercise, and no work does promote development, and of the growth thereby engendered, the purchaser has no reason to be in fear; for if one part shows maturity, he may be assured, that the other parts are also equally matured. The time the animal has lived is not of half the consequence, that the use which has been made of its life is, to the future possessor. The horse that has a mouth indicating five, and that can be proved to be five, if it has been worked from its earliest year and stinted in its food, has less energy and life than a younger creature forwarded by the fostering care of the breeder. The two animals are not to be compared. Supposing the one to be no more than four, it possesses the vigour and development of five; while the other, which is five, may have the decrepitude and constitutional infirmity of twenty. Let not the buyer fear the deceit of the breeder, but without dread accept the mouth as proof of the age; if the animal is not in years, he is in development, that which the teeth declare. To this conclusion, however, some will oppose their opinions. The animal, they will argue, has been stimulated to exhibit an unnatural maturity, and the seeds of future disease have thereby been planted in the system; therefore, it will be urged, the worth is depreciated. The statement looks well, but it is of no value, for a little inquiry will prove it to be based on false principles. Excessive stimulus checks the growth, or causes early disease, sacrificing either the health or life of the being. The feeder knows, from experience, that the quantity of nutriment must be measured by the powers of the creature that consumes it; and that over-feeding, by impairing the digestion, destroys or weakens rather than nurtures the body. The stimulus, pushed beyond a certain point, would keep the horse in the infirmary, and never fit it for the market. Every dealer knows this, and though such persons are, by the prejudice of the public, obliged to keep their animals loaded with fat, or in what is called "bloomy condition," they nevertheless fear to maintain this state of body for too long a period; and while it lasts, constantly resort to drugs, to counteract that tendency to disease which it engenders. They treat their stock, almost as a physician would treat so many city aldermen; and give dinner or digestive pills almost as regularly. A _fatted_ beast is always diseased, but an animal liberally fed is thereby rendered the more healthy. In fact, the dread of those results which ensue from comfort is, with regard to the horse, quite as unfounded as the fear, that mankind once had, of the "miseries of the rich," and the envy, poets taught them to indulge, towards the starvation of the poor. Such idle fancies may be dismissed with profit to the person who discards them; but at the same time there are some practices the reader needs to be cautioned against. To give the face of the horse a youthful appearance, some of the class of dealers who frequent public markets, low auctions, and country fairs, puncture the skin at that part where the falling or depression is seen above the eyes in old animals. Having inserted into the orifice a small quill, they then blow into the part, thereby inflating the subjacent tissue, and concealing the cavity. This notable artifice, which is called "_puffing the glym_" ought to impose upon no one. Should the trick be suspected, let the hand be carelessly raised to pat the neck and cheek of the animal, when it can, under pretence of likewise stroking the face, be passed over the part which is supposed to have been tampered with; and in the act a little pressure may be made upon the suspicious region: then, if the swelling has been induced in the manner stated, the passage of the hand is sufficient to squeeze out the air, and the contrast which the two sides of the face will afterwards present, gives to the countenance of the poor horse, a very knowing and peculiar expression. Let the person, however, who thus undertakes to expose roguery, be assured of his ability to protect himself in the office he has assumed; for the gentlemen who display their ingenuity on horses, are not averse to occasionally mutilating the human frame. To lay bare and detect such low, mean, and obvious cheatery, as the above, properly belongs to the police; and the least acute of the force, ought to be equal to the detection of so gross an imposition. The swelling, when caused by inflation, always has an unnatural aspect, such as a school-boy would find no difficulty in recognising, after his attention has been directed to the point. It looks puffed, and when the jaw moves, the part does not play freely with the motion. These circumstances, at a glance, declare the cheat which the pressure of the hand can, in an instant, prove to have been practised. The artifice, however, when adopted, ought to be of no avail. Young horses often exhibit the depression above the eye, of great depth; nor is it unusual to see old animals, in which the cavity is naturally shallow. The qualified judge, therefore, glances at, but never permits the state of, the part, to influence his decision; and the trick, when resorted to, can impose only on those who are too vain to acknowledge their ignorance, or too mean to pay for protection. Other indications are of greater worth, and to these, observation is directed. The roundness or flatness of the cheek, the sharpness or fulness of the lower jaw, no art can imitate: these, consequently, receive more attention. The eye is directed to the mouth; and still supposing the reader to be present at such places as the parties who practise tricks with horse flesh mostly frequent, let him be thought desirous of purchasing the animal, and therefore proceed with an examination: it will not be long before the teeth will be inspected. When the lips are separated, the incisors may be long and horizontal in their inclination; and, by the time this is noted, the seller probably has volunteered the information, that the horse he is most reluctantly obliged to part from, was six years old last grass. The expression of surprise such a statement elicits, is answered by oaths as to the fact, and direct accusations of ignorance against any one who would assert the animal to be a day older. The jaws are pulled asunder, and all the marks are seen. Here is proof; no man who knows anything of horses, he is told, would reject such evidence; and a host of ready bye-standers stare at the mouth, and only doubt if the creature is full six _yet_. The judge also looks at the marks, and then walks away: he has formed his opinion, and the sight of the marks confirms him in the conclusion he had arrived at. The absence of the police may caution him not to expose himself by noticing the shout of defiance, and bellowed taunts, that signalize his retreat; but he has seen the animal is a "bishop." Now what promoted the poor brute to ecclesiastical dignity? The term in horse slang, simply means that the marks are not natural, but have been made. There are two means by which that can be done. When time presses, and tools or skill are wanted, the tables of the teeth are touched only with a red hot wire, which leaves a black _mark_ wherever it is applied. This, however, is a coarse expedient, and the more usual practice is, to dig out the cavities with a kind of engraver's tool, and then to blacken the spaces thus created. The infundibula are imitated with much nicity; but the resemblance, however close it may be, never for a moment imposes on the qualified judge. The shape of the table, characteristic of the old tooth, cannot be altered, nor can the edge of enamel, which should gird the infundibulum, be artificially produced. Moreover, many of the people who "bishop" horses, are content to perform the operation only on the lower jaw, leaving the upper teeth untouched, because these are not generally inspected. Should such be the case, of course the marks will be more or less faded, where naturally they would be most fresh; for the infundibula of the lower jaw are lost some years prior to those of the upper disappearing. The attempted deception, therefore, is never successful, save when the "copers" are fortunate enough to meet with a "flat," who has just knowledge enough to be very wise in his own conceit. It must, however, be remembered, that the lower class of dealers are not limited in their transactions, and often dispose of animals to persons of respectability; therefore, it is not unusual to find horses standing for sale at commission stables, with mouths of a most conspicuous character. The owners of such horses may be gentlemen of the highest probity, and in ignorance the age may be mis-stated. For this reason, no man should purchase a horse of any individual, without having the animal previously examined by a certificated member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. The money so spent, is the smallest item in the account; and the sum saved by following this rule is often disproportioned to the expenditure,--to make no estimate of the disappointment and vexation which may be prevented. Respectable dealers will not knowingly allow the character of their stables to be injured by the presence of a "bishoped" animal. This class of persons are very scrupulous in that respect, but they are not always able to detect the truth--their education is often limited, and though good ordinary judges, they cannot, under every circumstance, decide correctly--they unconsciously deceive, being themselves deceived; and consequently every purchaser should take the precaution pointed out, no matter whence, or from whom, he may be buying a horse. Were all to act in the way indicated, much law would be spared, and a great deal of anger allowed to slumber. The dealers are not the rogues the enlightened public are fond of believing--many among them are as honourable as all men should be--some of the class, however, never let a horse escape out of their hands unmutilated. The teeth invariably receive the primary attention: if long, they are, by the application of a file, reduced to the length which the self-taught equine dentist supposes proper to youth. An acid is also applied to the enamelled surface, in order to render it white. No vast good is effected, but if the means were not designed to impose, no great harm would perhaps be done. The acid is not allowed to corrode the tooth, and the diminution of the length may possibly in some degree benefit the animal. The welfare of the creature, however, is not the object sought--the hope is to cheat; but no person who ought to be trusted, or even to trust himself to purchase a horse, should be so imposed upon. Whiteness is no sign of youth in the tooth of a horse, and the file cannot make the tables assume the juvenile figure. Horses that show such mouths, may be easily recognised--perhaps they are quiet while their legs are handled, but shy when the head is touched--they are not vicious, but timid, and the teeth tell the reason of their fear. It is well to pass them by, and dangerous to accept them at any price. If the teeth have been tampered with, what tricks may not have been practised to conceal other defects?

58. _Irregularity of growth in the horse's teeth_, should, in all cases, be early noticed, and speedily attended to, for so much of the worth of the horse depends on the animal's ability to feed, that it may be said, "no teeth no horse." The milk teeth are so regular in their growth, that I have not been able to hear of, or meet with a specimen, in which they were eccentric. The permanent teeth, however, are not unusually irregular; the most common irregularity which they exhibit, is that of retention of one or more of the milk incisors, and this more frequently is to be seen in the lower than in the upper jaw. Mr. Ernes, of whom I have before spoken as an excellent judge of the teeth, and a most able practitioner, was kind enough to show me the mouth of a cart horse which was under his care; the lower jaw had eleven incisors, but of these five were milk teeth. The appearance which the mouth presented was rather that of some foreign animal than of an ordinary horse. The bone had become deformed, and the gums were in several places in an inflammatory condition. Mr. Henderson possesses a most curious preparation of the lower jaw of a horse, in which there is exhibited eleven permanent teeth. The appearance which this specimen presents is extraordinary, and the existence of such a monstrosity, showing the extent to which nature may violate her own laws, deserves special attention. The possibility of so great a variation being encountered, will prepare the mind to expect and to consider the less marked deformities, which in practice are not unusually met with. It is not unusual to find horses with eight teeth in one jaw, two of which are generally, on inspection, found to be retained milk incisors. The milk teeth, if allowed to remain after the horse incisors are fairly up, often give to these last a very strange appearance. The following wood-cut depicts the mouth of a mare, to which my notice was directed by Mr. Henderson, the gentleman to whose generosity I have before had occasion to confess my obligations.