Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1883 — Dark Stables. [ARTICLE]

Dark Stables.

Any person who. has felt the pain and inconvenience of coming suddenly from a dark room into the full blaze of day, will easily conceive the necessity of lighting a stable in a proper manner. This is too often neglected in confined stables, and the consequences are most distressing to a humane observer. The poor horse, led suddenly out to his work, shows his pain by unmistakable expressions, stumbles, and runs against anything that may happen to be near, until the eye has in some degree accommodated itself to the new circumstances under which it is now placed. Nor is this all. By a continuance of this change, from darkness to sudden daylight, the eye becomes seriously injured. The retina, or sensible nerve, becomes dull and more or less useless; the horse’s sight is injured; he starts pnd shies at objects which ho sees imperfectly; and many a rider who has received a dangerous injury has had to thank his inattention to this simple pause, rather than any vicious habit of the animal, .to which it has been attributed. Blindness is almost certain to be caused by inattention to the above caution; but even blindness itself is less dangerous to the rider than imperfect sight. In the first case, the horse is forced to trust entirely to the bridle; but, in the latter, objects only half distinguished terrify and startle, though they would, under ordinary circumstances, be passed without notice. Another source of injury to the eye is the vapor which is constantly arising from a hot, foul stable. Every intelligent reader must have felt the cough and watery eyes which are caused to himself by going into §uch a place. What, then, must be the operation of the same causes on animals shut up for many hours at a stretch and exposed to their full activity? The eyes are inflamed by the ammoniacal vapors that are exhaled; the throat is irritated, cough is produced, and blindness, with cough or asthma, are the inevitable consequences of this neglect.