As John A and Bajer are philosophers in their own way, I have a mode of cure Mr. Wilkes is trying on my invalid horses Prince & Billy to tell them of. It is certainly a novel idea & if it succeeds in curing them, he ought to have a patent. It is no other way than “blowing them up,” yes blowing them up. He cut the skin just back of the foreshoulder so as to be able to insert a cane, about the size & length of a pipe-stem … & then Henry blowed awhile. The air soon commencing puffing the skin & by rubbing it was forced forward down the neck & forelegs. . . . After the blowing up was completed, by putting your hand on one of the horses it felt puffed up & by rubbing you could hear something like water gurgling between the skin & flesh. As old man Charles said when the first cars ran on the railroad here, “Well I can believe anything that anybody tells me these days after I’ve seen that.”

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Source: Howell Cobb Family Papers (MS 1376), Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.