SUCCESSFUL “ROARERS.”

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume VI, Issue 301, 30 April 1896, Page 7

SUCCESSFUL “ROARERS.”

The remarkable success, at the last Manchester races, of three horses which had silver tubes fitted in their throats, as a means of relief from the infirmity of “ roaring,” is the subject of an interesting, though somewhat, technical, article in the British Medical Journal. Although the animals in question had been subjected to the operation of tracheotomy and carried in their throats an artificial outlet for the wind-pipe, which might be supposed to cause them some inconvenience, they outstripped their competitors in the race, taking the first, second, »nd fourth places. A quarter of a century ago this city boasted a surgeon who had so far improved upon the provision made for him by Nature as to wear not only a wig, but a glass eye, a set of artificial teeth, a cork arm, and a wooden leg. It is upon record that that gentleman achieved more success in his profession than many of its members who might have been more satisfactorily equipped for the battle of life. Doubtless it was some advantage to him to be able to pres nt in his own person undeniable proofs of the success with which surgical art can be applied to the supplementing of corporeal defects. But even his case must yield the palm to that of “ roaring’’ racehorses, whose wind, and therefore “ going powers,” are actually improved by the use of an artificial sublarynx. It is not recorded that the doctor’s wooden leg rendered him a speedier pedestrian than Nature had qualified him to be, or that he ever trusted the performance of surgical operations to his artificial arm, in preference to its fellow of flesh and blood. It is in the actual improvement of natural provision by artificial appliances that veterinary science seems to have outstripped the branch of the healing art which occupies itself with bipeds only. The general public may be surprised to learn that it has become no uncommon thing for carriage horses to be furnished with silver tubes in their throats, and that even “in the hunting field, in certain instances, horses which, without them, could not have galloped a mile without the greatest discomfort to themselves and danger to their riders, have, with the aid of tubes, been hunted for five seasons.” These results must be highly satisfactory to the owners of “roarers,” but if they continue to develop “ roaring” will be in danger of being promoted from the status of an infirmity to that of a merit, and the proprietors of rncehorses born with properly fitting arytenoid cartilages may have something to say on the subject to handicappers, if, indeed, they are not tempted to risk proceedings by the AntiVivisection Section in order to qualify their steeds for the Order of the Silver Tube. This is Darwin’s great doctrine of the survival of the fittest thwarted and contradicted in what ought to be the best house of its friends. The fact that “ roaring” is hereditary suggests truly disquieting consideration in this connection. It would seem as if only one thing still remained to be done. It may be rash to affirm that the resources of veterinary science, co-operating with those of mechanical skill, are not capable of producing a twentieth-century Pegasus which will spur the ground with fifty bicycle swiftness, and mount the clouds on wings of Mr Hiram Maxim’s manufacture.