Horse's Heart

When people heard that "Oh, Dear," slim-legged courser of the Prince of Wales, had died of heart failure while making a jump (see COMMONWEALTH), they realized with vicarious contrition that a horse has a heart that may burst. "Oh, Dear" undoubtedly had a weak heart, although heart disease is fairly uncommon among horses. Their circulatory system is quite comparable to that of humans. Thus the horse has a heart with four chambers (two ventricles and two auricles) arteries, arterioles, capillaries, venules, veins and the appropriate valves. The blood is normally so pure that biological chemists use it in preparing serums, notably against human diphtheria. Undue excitement, hard riding, overexertion or debility from disease will strain the heart of the horse, as it would of the human being. But only a close and sympathetic observer would note signs of faintness in a horse.

If "Oh, Dear" had only fainted or collapsed after the jump, attendants might yet have saved his life by following certain veterinary procedures, by rubbing him vigorously with a brush, or a "handful of straw or twigs, or coarse towels, or even some coarse-woven wearing apparel. If aromatic spirits of ammonia were handy, they should have mixed one or two tablespoonfuls in four to six ounces of water and let the cloudy mixture trickle over the horse's tongue every 20 minutes. But this is a heroic measure of last recourse.