"spicing" horses

[George Thompson]

A story ripped from today's headlines, or so it seems to a horse-player:

     . . . many coachmen and grooms . . . are continually administering
pernicious drugs or medicines, or what is called *spicing* horses, which
has a tendency to inflame the blood. . . .
     National Advocate, July 25, 1818, p. 2, col. 4

I don't own the later volumes of DARE, and the pernicious Oxford UPr is
denying us the later volumes of HDAS.
The OED has:
*
*
*Spice, verb, sense 2, subsense d.* To dose (a horse) with spice in order
to mislead the buyer.
1841   J. T. J. Hewlett *Parish
Clerk<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:32445/view/Entry/186507?rskey=qPLUw9&result=1&isAdvanced=true>
* I. vii. 111   [He] knew nothing of spicing a horse, or giving him a ball


GAT

--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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