looked forward to by the owner with an inane kind of idea that the horses will receive benefit from their ‘rest;’ as, indeed, they really ought to do, if they were sanely dealt with during that time. The stableman looks forward to the same period with ferocious satisfaction, as then he will have an opportunity of giving swing to his cruelties. Beforehand he is rejoicing in projects of ’physicking’ (i.e. purging) and blistering, and then ‘conditioning,’ his hapless and helpless horses, and counting on the empire he has over his master—and he is seldom wrong on that head—for carte blanche. Mayhew says ‘the prejudices of ignorance are subjects for pity: the slothfulness of the better educated merits reprobation.’ ‘No slave proprietor possesses the power with which the groom is invested.’ In Brazil the slave-owner is not allowed by law to flog his slaves himself; if they are judged to merit flogging they have to be sent to an official specially appointed in each district for that purpose, which official is, of course, free from anger and vindictiveness, and only lays on the regular strokes, which the owner would be likely to exceed both in force and number.
Aloes, as being the most violent and irritating of purges, is the favourite one with the groom. It frequently remains inside the horse a couple of days before it ‘sets;’ it often thus causes inflammation or irritation of the kidneys, and terribly weakens him. Its operation has hardly ceased when the man is applying blisters to the horse’s legs; and the most powerful of ‘patents’ and ‘vesicants’ are his greatest
