This is a vintage film of Australia's greatest racehorse, and one of the best in the world, the magnificent 'Phar Lap. In his short time on the earth Phar Lap won two Cox Plates, a Melbourne Cup and 19 other weight for age races.
Thank you for putting this film on your website — it’s one of the real treasures of Australian history. However, I was disappointed that in the accompanying commentary it is stated that the cause of Phar Lap’s death was ‘confirmed’ in 2008.
Those who say this (an I concede plenty of people have done so over the past couple of years) ignore the fact that during Phar Lap’s post-mortem, conducted just after his death in 1932, university experts specifically searched for evidence of arsenic poisoning and identified a level of arsenic that was much more likely to help than harm the horse. Trainers of the day regularly gave horses arsenic-based tonics, so this finding was hardly surprising.
And they also fail to acknowledge that the clinical signs and progress of Phar Lap’s rapidly deteriorating condition in the hours before he died were not those of a horse suffering from acute arsenic poisoning.
A more logical cause of Phar Lap’s death is Duodenitis-Proximal jejunitis. Veterinary surgeons today know that horses can be quickly killed by this disease. Bacteria in the gut of the horse produce a toxin that attacks the lining of the small intestine close to the stomach. The walls of the small intestine are severely damaged and acutely inflamed. The intestine is blocked, not by a physical barrier but by a length of intestine that refuses to function
The signs Phar Lap exhibited before his death: elevated temperature, increased pulse rate, acute colic, distension of the small intestine, a build up of fluid in the stomach leading to perforation and rapid death fit Duodenitis-Proximal jejunitis to the letter. In almost all cases, the horse has travelled significant distances in the weeks before his death.
The fact the disease was not identified until 50 years after Phar Lap died is important, because those performing the autopsy in 1932 would have looked first for a physical blockage in the intestine, and were probably astonished when they did not find one. Only then would they have joined others in thinking seriously about less logical causes of death.
That, nearly 80 years after Phar Lap’s death, scientists can separate the arsenic used in the taxidermy process from that which entered Phar Lap’s hair before he died is fantastic. But these scientists themselves concede that the analysis of arsenic in hair is a complex matter, and to the best of my knowledge they have not as yet provided any specific measure of how much arsenic Phar Lap ingested in the hours before he died.
Given this, and with plenty of contrary evidence to be found, it’s very hard to see how arsenic can be found guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
Thanks again for putting up the film. He was an extraordinary racehorse!
Geoff Armstrong Says:
22/12/2010 4:18:55 PM
Thank you for putting this film on your website — it’s one of the real treasures of Australian history. However, I was disappointed that in the accompanying commentary it is stated that the cause of Phar Lap’s death was ‘confirmed’ in 2008.
Those who say this (an I concede plenty of people have done so over the past couple of years) ignore the fact that during Phar Lap’s post-mortem, conducted just after his death in 1932, university experts specifically searched for evidence of arsenic poisoning and identified a level of arsenic that was much more likely to help than harm the horse. Trainers of the day regularly gave horses arsenic-based tonics, so this finding was hardly surprising.
And they also fail to acknowledge that the clinical signs and progress of Phar Lap’s rapidly deteriorating condition in the hours before he died were not those of a horse suffering from acute arsenic poisoning.
A more logical cause of Phar Lap’s death is Duodenitis-Proximal jejunitis. Veterinary surgeons today know that horses can be quickly killed by this disease. Bacteria in the gut of the horse produce a toxin that attacks the lining of the small intestine close to the stomach. The walls of the small intestine are severely damaged and acutely inflamed. The intestine is blocked, not by a physical barrier but by a length of intestine that refuses to function
The signs Phar Lap exhibited before his death: elevated temperature, increased pulse rate, acute colic, distension of the small intestine, a build up of fluid in the stomach leading to perforation and rapid death fit Duodenitis-Proximal jejunitis to the letter. In almost all cases, the horse has travelled significant distances in the weeks before his death.
The fact the disease was not identified until 50 years after Phar Lap died is important, because those performing the autopsy in 1932 would have looked first for a physical blockage in the intestine, and were probably astonished when they did not find one. Only then would they have joined others in thinking seriously about less logical causes of death.
That, nearly 80 years after Phar Lap’s death, scientists can separate the arsenic used in the taxidermy process from that which entered Phar Lap’s hair before he died is fantastic. But these scientists themselves concede that the analysis of arsenic in hair is a complex matter, and to the best of my knowledge they have not as yet provided any specific measure of how much arsenic Phar Lap ingested in the hours before he died.
Given this, and with plenty of contrary evidence to be found, it’s very hard to see how arsenic can be found guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
Thanks again for putting up the film. He was an extraordinary racehorse!