YANKEE “DOPES” FOR HORSES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1138, 1 February 1912, Page 4

YANKEE “DOPES” FOR HORSES.

A German sporting paper has drawn up a list ot all the ‘dopes’' Which na»c reached the Continent from America. It is staved that the dose given internally depends on the weight of the horse, and can by an expert be so carefully given as to defy detection. All the difficulties preventing an accurate analysis are, enumerated, and to obtain the slightest proof would necessitate the horse being watched without intermission for several days; gathering and examining the secretions, which, in the case of strychnine would not give any result except after several days. Cocaine and strychnine are the favourite drugs’ but, as the writer of the article observes, the mere fact that certain alkaloids in small quantities are to be found in the bukal and dermal secretions, and the fact of their having increased the vigour of frogs and even killed them, is not positive proof that chemically-prepared food offered in the stables under different names with most of the greenstuffs trainers give

to their equine charges contain alkaloids, and high feeding with corn, and an indirierent digestion on the part of tne horses may be productive of poisonous alkaloids owing to the presence of Avenine. There is no difficulty in discovering these different alkaloids. A description is given of the manner in which the analyses made by Austrian and Russian chemists were made recently, and their veracity is impugned. Strychnine and cocaine are used in most of the chemical food preparations, and the latter is given medicinally. Fasting and bucal secretions even with human engender at times a violent poison, and then again the frog is not calculated for any experiment, for the frog is highly sensitive to sugar in any form, and sugar is present in nearly every kind of preprepared food. The conclusion is that the analyses offer no real proof as to the culpability of a trainer who has been deprived of his license on suspicion.