Hygiene for Men and Horses.
It has been demonstrated in tens of thousands of cases in family life that two meals are not only ample for the hardest and most exhausting labors, physical or mental, but altogether best. The same thing has been fully proved in hundreds of instances with horses, and has never in a single instance failed, after a fair trial, to work the best results. An hour's rest at noon is vastly more restoring to a tired animal, whether horse or man, than a meal of any sort, although the latter may prove more stimulating. The morning meal given, if possible, early enough for partial stomach digestion before the muscular and nervous systems are called into active play; the night meal offered long enough after work to insure a rested condition of the body; a diet liberal enough, but never excessive; this is the law and gospel of hygienic diet for either man or beast. I have never tried to fatten my horses, for I long ago learned that fat is disease; but I have always found that if a horse does solid work enough he will be fairly plump if he has two sufficient meals. Muscle is the product of work and food; fat may be laid on by food alone. We see, however, plenty of horses that are generously—too generously—fed, that still remain thin, and show every indication of being undernourished; dyspepsia is a disease not confined exclusively to creatures who own or drive horses. But for perfect health and immunity from disease, restriction of exercise must be met by restriction in diet. Horses require more food in cold than in warm weather, if performing the same labor. In case of a warm spell in winter I reduce their feed, more or less, according to circumstances, as surely as I do the amount of fuel consumed. I also adopt the same principle in my own diet. The result is, that neither my animals nor myself are ever for one moment sick.—Medical and Surgical Journal.