Causes: early life, exclusive activity of fourth stomach, faulty milk, absence of colostrum, milk from advanced lactation, milk of other genus, or altered by excitement, or unwholesome food, excess on hungry stomach, soured, fermented, feverish milk, putrid milk, leucomaines, overdistension of stomach, farinaceous food, hair balls, morning and evening milk, milk after first calf, composition of milk by genus, ruminant’s milk to monogastric animal, infectious microbes—bacilli, micrococci. Symptoms: costiveness, inappetence, listlessness, tense abdomen, acid eructations, fœtid diarrhœa, becoming yellow or white, general fœtor, staring coat, pallid mucosæ, tucked up tender abdomen, weakness, emaciation, fever, bloating, frothy dejections, arthritis, peritonitis, pneumonitis, hepatitis, ophthalmia, laminitis, etc. Mortality: in foals, calves, lambs. Lesions: gastric and intestinal congestions, exudations, necrosis, incoagulable blood in foals, anæmia. Prevention: normal feeding, expulsion of meconium, care of nurse, adapt composition of cow’s milk to genus of nursling, warmth, lime water, rubber teat, Pasteurizing, disinfection, separation from infected animals and places, breed from robust parents. Treatment: elimination, antiseptics, boiling milk, rennet, ipecacuan, carminatives, astringents, tar, calomel and chalk, gum, flaxseed, elm bark.

Causes. The abomasum in the adult is protected against disorder, by the normal activity of the first three stomachs, macerating the food, presiding over the second and more perfect mastication, grinding it between the omasal folds into a firmly attenuated pulp and delaying its progress so that it arrives at the fourth stomach at short intervals and in small quantities only at a time. It follows that this organ is rarely involved in serious disorder unless as the result of the ingestion of poisons, or of excess of water, or from the presence of parasites. In the very young ruminant, however, the condition is reversed, the first three stomachs are as yet undeveloped, and incapable of receiving more than the smallest quantity of food or of retaining the same, and the abomasum alone is functionally active and receives at once practically everything that may be swallowed. In the first few weeks of life therefore the ruminant is exposed to almost the same dangers, from overloading, indigestion, inflammation and poisoning as is the monogastric animal. For the time, indeed, the undeveloped ruminant is in its physiological and pathological relations, a monogastric animal. For this early life therefore whatever applies to the soliped applies equally well to the ruminant.

When allowed to suck at will from a healthy nurse, which completed its gestation about the time the young animal was born, indigestion is rare. But whatever interferes with the normal supply is liable to cause derangement. The withholding of the first milk—colostrum—the laxative properties of which are essential to clear away the intestinal accumulations of fœtal life—meconium; the placing of new-born offspring on the milk of nurses that bore their young many months before; bringing up of foals on cow’s milk; working, overdriving, hunting, shipping by rail, or otherwise exciting the dams; allowing too long intervals between the meals—feeding morning and night only, or morning, noon and night, the nurse being kept at work or pasture in the interval; feeding unwholesome food to the nurse; bringing up by hand, on cold and even soured milk, or that which has become contaminated by putrid leavings in the unscalded buckets. Some of these causes should be emphasized, for example the milk of excitement and fever, milk that is soured or putrid, and milk suddenly swallowed in excess. The nurse which is fevered or subjected to over-exertion has produced an excess of tissue waste and leucomaines which largely escape from the system in the milk. This milk is therefore at times unwholesome and even poisonous. Mares subjected to severe work or that fret much under lighter work, cows carried by car or boat, or driven violently, and any nursing animal which has been thrown into a fever from any cause whatever, is liable to yield toxic milk. This would include the milk of all severe diseases, as being liable to become charged with toxins and ptomaines and thus poison the young animal, which subsists upon it as an exclusive diet, even though the actual pathogenic microbe may not be present in the secretion.

With regard to fermented milk, that which has been simply soured, relaxes the bowels and the attendant congestion contributes to further derangement and even infection by any pathogenic germ which may be present, or by microbes which are habitually saprophytic, but take occasion to dangerously attack the weakened mucosa. If the milk has undergone putrefaction in the feeding bucket, the co-existence of the septic germ and the septic ptomaines and toxins, often determines indigestion and irritation of the mucosa. These poisons may further be absorbed and produce general constitutional disorder which reacts most injuriously on the stomach and digestion.

Milk swallowed rapidly and in excess by a hungry calf or foal, overdistends the stomach, which, like other hollow viscera in such conditions, is rendered paretic or paralytic, and suffers from suspension of both the vermicular contractions and the peptic secretions. Under these conditions the milk, which is one of the most admirable culture media for bacterial ferments, undergoes rapid decomposition, with the production of a series of toxins and ptomaines varying according to the different kinds of microbes that may be present. Under such conditions microbes which are normally harmless, vigorously and destructively attack the mucous membrane and determine some of the worst types of juvenile diarrhœa.

In artificial feeding there is another serious danger. Calves in particular are brought up largely on gruels made from farinaceous material. These contain a large quantity of starch which requires the action of the saliva (ptyaline) to resolve it into glucose, and fit it for absorption. But in the early days of life the salivary glands are almost entirely inactive, and it is only as the first three stomachs develop that this secretion becomes normally abundant. This is sought to be met by fixing in the feeding bucket a rubber teat, which the young animal is made to suck so as to solicit the secretion of saliva. The benefit obtained is however more from the slower ingestion of the milk than from any material increase of saliva from the as yet functionally inactive glands.

The presence of hair balls in the stomach, derived from the skin of themselves or others is one of the most injurious of the causes of juvenile indigestion. Lying as these do at this early age in the one well developed stomach they interfere with its normal secretions, and being at first open in texture they become saturated with putrefying ingesta, which gives out the most poisonous products.

The milk is materially affected by the food eaten by the nursing animal and such variations in the milk tend at times to derange a weak stomach. The following table from Becquerel and Vernois gives the results of dry and succulent food on the amount of the different proximate principles in the milk.

The decrease of the solids but especially of the casein, sugar, and salts is very marked in the cow on poor winter feeding. In the goat fed on beets alone the increase of sugar and decrease of other solids is striking.

To the same effect speaks the following table giving the results of an experiment with a ration of corn and cob meal, in contrast with one of sugar meal. Each cow had a common ration of 12 lbs. corn fodder and 4 lbs. clover hay, in addition to the test diet which was 12½ lbs. corn and cobmeal in the one case, and 10 lbs. sugar meal in the other. To avoid the misleading effects of a sudden transition from one food to the other, each special ration was fed for seven days before the commencement of each test period.

Here we find a material increase of the solids and particularly of the fat whenever the sugar (gluten) meal, rich in fat and albuminoids was furnished. It is interesting to note the relative amount of fat and albuminoids in the corn and cobmeal mixture as compared with the sugar meal.

Such variations in the quality of the milk under different rations, occasionally affect the weak stomach of the new born, and as the same constitution is likely to predominate in the same herd, a number may be attacked together as a result of some change in feeding.

Other conditions, however, lead to variation in quality. Hassall found that the morning milk of the cow furnished 7.5 per cent. of cream, while the evening milk gave 9.5 per cent. Boedecker found that morning milk had 10 per cent. of solids and evening milk 13 per cent. The first drawn at any milking is poorer in cream than that which is drawn last. The first may have only one-half or in extreme cases one-fourth of the cream that the strippings have. When the cow is in heat the milk not only contains more of the solids, but has granular and white blood cells like colostrum and often disagrees with the young animal. The milk of the young cow with her first calf is usually more watery than that of the adult, and that of the old one has a greater tendency to become acid. The longer the period which has elapsed since calving the greater the tendency to an excess of salts. Certain breeds like the Channel Island cattle produce an excess of butter fat (4–5 per cent.), whereas others like Holsteins, Ayrshires and Short Horns have less on an average (3–4 percent.), the casein and, it may be, the water predominating. Hence Jersey and Guernsey milk will scour calves which do well on that of one of these other breeds.

Overkept, fermented and soured food tends to produce acidity and other changes in the milk. Old brewers’ grains, swill, and spoiled gluten meal, or ensilage, especially such as has been put up too green, are especially injurious to the milk. The milk of cows fed on raw Swedish turnips or cabbage acquires a bitter taste and odor.

The milk of different genera of animals offer such strong contrasts that it is always dangerous to attempt to bring up the young of one genus upon the milk of another. The following table giving the composition of the milk in woman and each of the domestic mammals serves to illustrate this and to furnish a basis for adjustment:

Not only does the milk vary so widely with the genera, but that of the ruminating animal with its great excess of casein coagulates in the stomach into large dense clots which are not easily penetrated and digested by the peptic juices while that of woman or soliped forms loose clots, easily permeable by the gastric fluids and therefore much more readily digestible. Indeed the milk of these monogastric animals often form loose floating flocculi only, instead of solid clots. As cows are usually selected for foster-mothers to the orphaned animals of other genera this becomes a source of danger to the young and must be obviated by modifying the milk more in keeping with that of man or soliped.

As predisposing causes, must be named a weak constitution and damp, dark, filthy, or otherwise unwholesome buildings. Buildings with no drainage nor ventilation beneath the floors, standing on filth-saturated soil, and those with double walls holding dead rats and chickens are especially to be dreaded. In breeds of inconstant color the lighter colored calves (light yellow, light brown) are more subject to such attacks than the darker shades (dark browns, reds, blacks). The weak constitution may be a result of close breeding, without due consideration of the strength and vigor of the parents. Then young animals kept indoors in impure air, damp and darkness are more susceptible than those that are kept in pasture and are invigorated by exercise, pure air and sunshine.

Aside from the general run of causes, predisposing and exciting, we must recognize the contagious element. Jensen has sought to identify the microbe as a small ovoid bacillus united in pairs, or in long chains. This was present not only in the ingesta, but in the lesions of the mucosa, and in the lymph glands. Its cultures ingested in milk, or injected into the rectum sometimes produced the affection. Microscopically it resembled the bacillus fœtidus lactis, but the latter failed to produce the disease. He looks upon it as a sport of the bacillus coli communis.

Perroncito found micrococci, usually arranged in pairs and comparable to the cultures of those obtained from the blood in the pneumonia of calves. The injection of the cultures into the thorax of a Guinea-pig caused pleuro-pneumonia with or without dysentery. The rabbit proved immune. At the necropsy the Guinea-pig like the calf showed the diplococci in the blood. Nikolski who studied the affection in lambs seeks to incriminate both micrococci and bacilli.

It is premature to specify any particular microbe as the sole cause of the affection. It seems not improbable that bacterial ferments of one or more specific kinds, which in a healthy animal have no injurious effect, may by special combination, or by growth in a mucosa in a given morbid condition, acquire properties which render them not only violently irritating, but may retain such properties so as to render them actively contagious. In this condition they may overcome the resistance of the most healthy stomach and bowels and attack all young animals into which they may secure an entrance. Certain it is that the infection may persist in the same stable for years, will enter a new herd with a newly purchased cow or calf bought out of a previously infected lot, and will follow the watershed and affect in succession the different herds drinking from a stream as it flows downward.

The similarity of the germ found by Jensen to the bacillus coli communis, suggests that in this as in a number of other contagious affections a pathogenic sport from this common saprophyte is at least one of the microbian factors in this disease.

Symptoms. These may set in just after birth but usually the disease occurs within the two first weeks of life. When delayed for a few days after birth it may be preceded by some constipation, the fæces appearing hard, moulded, and covered with mucus. This is especially the case when the meconium has been retained and has proved a cause of irritation. The young animal is careless of the teat or refuses it (or the pail if brought up by hand), yawns and seems weary. The abdominal muscles are tense and the belly may be swollen if fermentation has already set in but this is rarely excessive. Straining to defecate usually causes eructations of an acid odor, and sometimes vomiting of solid soursmelling clots. Abdominal pain may be manifested by uneasy movements of the tail and hind limbs, by looking toward the flank and even by plaintive cries. This is followed within six hours by liquid dejections, at first merely soft, slimy and sour but soon complicated by a peculiar odor of rotten cheese which becomes increasingly offensive as the malady advances. The tail and hips become soaked with the discharges and as the putrid fermentation goes on after their discharge of the fæcal matters, the air becomes more and more repulsive. The same odor pervades the mouth and the breath and the tongue is coated with a whitish, grayish or yellowish fur.

The fæces become more watery and slimy, with much casein in course of putrefaction, and the patient is rapidly run down by the profuse discharge and the general poisoning by absorbed putrid products. In the worst cases this may prove fatal in one or two days.

When the illness is more prolonged the alvine passages which at first number five or six per day, increase to fifteen or twenty and are passed with more effort, usually leaving the anus in a liquid stream. The color of the stools changes from a yellow to a grayish yellow or dirty white, hence the common name of white scour, and the fœtor is intensified.

Appetite may be in part preserved for a time but is gradually lost, and the subject becomes dull, listless and weak, indisposed to rise and walking unsteadily when raised. A general appearance of unthriftiness, staring coat, scurfy, unhealthy skin, pallor of the mucous membranes, arching of the back, tucking up and tenderness of the abdomen, excoriation of the margins of the anus, and congestion of the rectum as seen everted during defecation, mark the advance of the disease. Emaciation becomes very marked, and weakness and prostration extreme.

Fever usually sets in as the disease advances, as marked by hyperthermia, hot dry muzzle, hot ears, accelerated pulse and breathing.

When the intestinal fermentation is extreme there may be distinct bloating, more acute colicy pains, rumbling of the bowels and a frothy and even bloody condition of the dejections. The prostration may become extreme and the temperature reduced to the normal or below.

Death may result from inanition and exhaustion, or from nervous prostration and poisoning.

The affection may be complicated by purulent arthritis, peritonitis, pneumonia, hepatitis, keratitis or laminitis. It may prove fatal in from three to ten days.

Mortality. This is always high. For foals it has been set down at 80 per cent. of the numbers attacked, for calves at 54 to 90 per cent., and for lambs at 66 per cent. In 500 lambs Beresow found 300 attacked and 200 died. Kuleschow sets the losses at 30 to 40 per cent. of the lambs, and Cadeac advises that even the survivors should be fitted for the butcher as they are unfit for reproduction.

Lesions. In foals these are mainly confined to the intestines which show a more or less extended area of redness and congestion with catarrhal or pseudomembranous exudate on the mucosa, and the submucous connective tissue is infiltrated softened and marked by intense punctiform redness. The epithelium is swollen, opaque and easily detached, and Peyers patches infiltrated and prominent. The blood in the intestinal vessels is incoagulable. Exudation into the peritoneum and softening of the liver are not infrequent.

In calves the lesions are very similar, but the 4th stomach is usually implicated, the congestion and epithelial desquamation being most marked in the pyloric region. The contents of the intestines are mucopurulent, grayish, yellowish or red, and intensely fœtid. The follicles of the small intestine are red and projecting with an areola of congestion. Softening and even necrotic centers are found in the liver and kidneys and the mesenteric glands are swollen, red and softened.

In lambs the lesions are nearly the same in the 4th stomach, intestine, lymph glands, liver and kidneys. There is usually marked emaciation and the spleen and nerve centres are anæmic.

Prevention. The first consideration is to avoid the various causes which have been enumerated. Give the young the warm milk of its dam or of a nurse of the same species and at the same time after parturition. If it is necessary to give older milk to the new born don’t fail to clear out the bowels by a tablespoonful or two of castor oil (foal, calf,) or two teaspoonfuls (lamb), or to add manna or linseed decoction to the milk. Protect both nurse and nursling against cold storms, overheating, overwork, excitement, and sudden changes of diet, (dry to green, etc.). If the nurse has been overheated or overexcited draw off the first milk by hand and let the nursling have only that which is secreted later. Avoid the milk of diseased and especially fevered animals. If the milk of one nurse disagrees, correct any obvious cause in the food or general management, and if none can be found get another nurse. If fungi appear in the milk (inducing ropiness or not) withold the food or water from which they have been probably derived and give bisulphite of soda (cow or mare 2 to 4 drs., ewe ½ dr. daily). When an animal of one genus has to be brought up on the milk of another, let the milk be so modified by the addition of water, sugar, cream, etc., as will approximate it somewhat to the normal food. The milk of the cow may be given unchanged to lambs or kids, while for the foal it should be diluted by adding ⅖ of water, and sugar enough to render it perceptibly sweet. Even more sugar is wanted for the young ass. In place of simple water, barley water may be used, as this not only loosens the coagulum formed in the stomach, but renders it especially open and permeable to the digestive fluids. Another method of special value for puppies is to let the cow’s milk stand for several hours and then take only the upper half (containing most of the cream) for feeding. This must be watched lest it should unduly relax the bowels. In all cases the milk artificially prepared should be given milk warm. To retard the acid fermentation which is liable to occur early and injuriously in adapted milk, the addition of an ounce of lime water to each quart of milk is of great advantage. Pigs and puppies can usually adapt themselves readily to the milk of the cow. In all cases in which a young animal is raised by hand and especially if on the milk of another species, it is desirable to provide against sudden overloading of the stomach. The artificial rubber teat fixed in the feeding pail serves a good purpose in this respect. Pasteurizing is admissible but boiling of the milk is objectionable, as rendering the milk constipating and thereby favoring irritation. In condensed milk this tendency is largely reduced by reason of the excess of sugar and consequent looseness of the clot, only care should be taken to dilute it sufficiently with boiled water.

Among the most important measures of precaution, is the separation of the sick from the healthy, and to disinfect thoroughly the buildings in which the infected have been. Straw, and when possible dung should be burned; if not, they should be buried together with the urine. The stalls should be thoroughly cleansed and then saturated with mercuric chloride (1 : 1000), or sulphuric acid (3 : 100), or a saturated solution of sulphate of copper. Here as elsewhere chloride of lime (4 oz. to the gallon) with as much quick lime as will make a good white wash, does admirably, as it is at once seen if any part has been missed.

Esser remarked that the calves of cows that had been removed to another stable some time before parturition, usually remained healthy, provided they were kept from the other and sick calves.

Lastly, it is important to use for breeding purposes such animals only as have a strong, vigorous constitution, and to furnish a healthful, abundant aliment and to allow a sufficient amount of exercise during gestation. Vigor and stamina are the great desiderata, but these are usually found with the darker colors.

Treatment. The old treatment of eliminating offensive matter by a laxative is still good, and thus castor oil (2 ozs. for a foal or calf, 2 drs. for lamb), or rhubarb (1 dr. foal or calf, 1 scr. for lamb), or manna (½ oz, foal or calf, 1 dr., lamb), may be given with laudanum (1 dr., foal or calf, 10 drops, lamb), and salicylate of soda (16 grs., foal or calf, 5 grs.,lamb). The milk should be given boiled. An old and excellent remedy to follow the laxative is solution of rennet made by adding ⅛ of a calf’s abomasum to a quart of 20 per cent, alcohol (or sherry). A tablespoonful may be given with each meal. The value of this as an antiferment is liable to be overlooked, yet both the hydrochloric acid and pepsin are strongly antiseptic, and neither of these is produced to any extent in the diseased stomach. In addition to this ipecacuan has been used and by its stimulant action on both stomach and liver it furnishes the two most important natural disinfectants of the alimentary canal (foal or calf 1 dr., lamb 10 drops ipecacuan wine, thrice a day).

In addition to these or separately, antiseptics, carminatives and astringents may be employed. An excellent preparation is prepared chalk 1 oz., white bismuth 1 oz., tincture of cinnamon 8 ozs., gum arabic ½ oz. A tablespoonful thrice a day will often check the disorder.

Cadeac advises, subnitrate of bismuth 5 grains, salicylic acid 5 grains, naphthol 20 grains, syrup 150 grains, distilled water 100 grains. One or two tablespoonfuls in the mouth after each drink (foal or calf).

Filliatre obtained excellent results in calves, with a solution of tar 150 grams in 6 litres boiling water, given in the dose of ⅓ litre every half hour. It may also be used as an enema. The diarrhœa is promptly checked, and the tar water may then be restricted to ¼ litre mixed with the milk of the next two days. One-tenth of the dose may be given to lambs.

Among other antiseptics in use may be named salicylic acid and tannin, salol, boric acid, betol, diaphthol, bruzonaphthol, salicylate of bismuth, creolin, naphthalin, and lactic acid.

When icteric membranes, white discharges and extreme fœtor indicate hepatic disorder, calomel 1 part and chalk 12 parts may be resorted to three or four times a day (foal or calf 6 grs., lamb 1 gr.).

Among the carminatives may be named anise, fennel, dill, cinnamon, and chamomile. Beside their stimulant action these are all more or less antiseptic.

In addition to the boiling of the milk, and in certain cases as a temporary substitute, may be used sterilized mucilaginous agents, gum arabic, flax seed, and slippery elm.

ACUTE GASTRIC INDIGESTION IN SOLIPEDS. TYMPANITIC STOMACH.

Definition. Causes: overloading, lessened secretion, mastication or insalivation, frosted food, fermenting food, appetizing food, cooked food, debility, disease, starvation, overwork, fatigue, violent exertion after a meal, anæmia, parasitism, injury to vagi or their centres, iced water, wading or swimming in iced water, food with excess of proteids, drink after grain, alkaline waters. Symptoms: in slight cases, in severe, violent colic, weariness, pinched countenance, acid mouth, bloating of abdomen, anorexia, dysphagia, no rumbling of bowels, no fæces, tries to eructate, dullness, stupor, coma, vomiting. Rupture of stomach. Recovery. Lesions: overdistended stomach, ruptured peritoneal hemorrhage, ruptured diaphragm, small bloodless liver and spleen. Diagnosis. Treatment: Aromatics, stimulants, antiferments, laxatives, stimulants of peristalsis, exercise, friction, electricity, chloral hydrate, puncture of stomach and colon, probang, stomach pump, dieting, tonics.

Definition. Suspension of the normal functions—motor and secretory—of the stomach and the supervention of fermentation in its contents.

Causes. The small size of the stomach in the soliped (26 quarts) and the rapidity with which the alimentary matters normally traverse it, render this organ much less subject to disorder than the complex stomachs of ruminants. In his native state the horse eats at frequent intervals and digestion is constantly going on, so that the viscus is never distended to paresis, nor the secretions, nor vermicular movements retarded by excess of ingesta. But the limited capacity of the viscus becomes in its turn a cause of indigestion whenever the animal is tempted by hunger to hurriedly swallow too great a quantity of food; when the decreased secretions fail to act with sufficient promptness on the contents and leave them to undergo fermentation; when from imperfect mastication and insalivation the food is left in large masses comparatively impermeable to the gastric juice, and accumulates in firmly packed masses; when frosted food (roots, potatoes, apples, turnip tops, etc.), taken in quantity temporarily chills and paralyzes the stomach, and starts a speedy and gaseous fermentation; when the food swallowed is already in process of fermentation (musty or covered by cryptogams) and full of toxic fermentation products which tend to paralyze the stomach. Old animals are especially liable because not only are the teeth and salivary glands ineffective, but the functions of the stomach are habitually below par.

The paralysis of the stomach by overloading is seen especially in animals that have been fasting for too great a length of time, and are then furnished with a food, rich, appetizing and abundant. Few horses are proof against the temptation to overeating when they get to the cornbin, the ripening grain or maize, or the field of rich red clover. Some are natural gluttons and on gaining access to grain or green food, will suddenly overload the stomach beyond its power of active contraction on its contents, and without sufficient mastication or insalivation. The food is literally bolted whole, with no admixture of saliva, and no facility for admixture of gastric juice, even if the overloading had left the stomach capable of secreting the latter. Cooked food is especially dangerous by reason of its bulk, the facility with which it is swallowed, and the rapid and excessive dilatation of the stomach caused by it, rather than from lack of trituration and saliva. If fed judiciously, cooked food is more fattening for both horse and ox, any lack of ptyaline being counterbalanced by the presence of amylopsin in the intestines.

Such paresis and indigestion, however, are more common as the result of a general debility or a special gastric atony caused by disease, starvation, overwork or fatigue. In all acute febrile and inflammatory diseases the gastric functions are weak or suspended, and if the animal is tempted to eat, the ingesta is unaffected by the digestive fluids and forms a suitable fluid for injurious fermentations. In convalescence especially, when the starved system once more craves support, tempting food is liable to be taken to excess, unless the attendant is especially judicious and careful in grading the feed as the stomach can dispose of it. The horse that has been starved must be fed little and often, of easily digested material until the gastric functions are restored. Long continued severe work, exhausts the motor and secretory power of the stomach, as it debilitates the system at large, and the animal may be at first unable to digest a feed of grain even if he will take it. In such a case as in that of the very hungry glutton a drink of gruel or a handful of hay which he must masticate will often obviate the danger.

Violent exertion immediately after a meal arrests digestion, and tends to a fatal indigestion. An animal fed grain and immediately put to severe work, or subjected to confinement for a painful operation, may die in two hours from tympanitic indigestion.

This weakness of the digestion may come from profuse bleeding, from the anæmia caused by parasites (sclerostomata), or from injuries to the pneumogastric nerves or their centres. It can be produced experimentally by cutting both vagi; the gastric contents then remain packed and solid, without peptic juices and without digestion.

Iced water, like frozen food, may temporarily arrest the gastric functions and entail fermentation. It acts most dangerously on the overheated and exhausted horse, and though the indigestion may not prove fatal, it may induce a sympathetic skin eruption or laminitis. The mere exposure to external cold is less to be dreaded as there is a compensating stimulus which drives the blood to internal organs, the stomach included. Standing in cold water or wading or swimming a cold river, is commonly less injurious than a full drink of iced water, when heated and fatigued.

Certain kinds of food are far more dangerous than others, and especially such as should be digested in the stomach. Thus the different grains—barley, rye, buckwheat, wheat, oats, Indian corn, and even bran, have been especially objected to. The amount of proteids in oats, for example, is 11.9 per cent., while those of hay are but 7 per cent. The same bulk of oats, therefore, demands nearly double the work of the stomach to reduce its nitrogenous constituents to peptones than does hay. But when fully insalivated the difference is even greater, for oats take but the equivalent of their own weight of saliva, whereas hay takes four times its own weight. There is 1 part of proteids in 16.7 parts of insalivated oats, and but 1 in 71.4 of insalivated hay. If the oats are bolted without mastication, which can never be the case with hay, the discrepancy becomes greater still. Grain is best fed often, in moderate amount, and without further loading of the stomach immediately with either solids or fluids. Above all never feed grain to a thirsty horse and then lead him direct to the watering trough. Even should he fail to have the stomach paralyzed by the cold water, and indigestion developed, yet much of the proteids will be washed out into the small intestine to threaten indigestion there.

Selenitic waters may induce indigestion by neutralizing the hydrochloric acid of the stomach and interrupting digestion.

Finally all forms of gastritis—catarrhal, toxic, and phlegmonous—induce atony, fermentation and indigestion.

Symptoms. There may be simply tardy digestion or grave disorder with impaction or tympany.

In the former case there is impairment or perversion of appetite, refusal of food, irregular feeding, licking earth or lime, or eating filth, even fæces, with some dullness, apathy, or signs of pain such as pawing with the fore feet, or looking round at the flanks. There is rumbling of the bowels, followed in favorable cases by the passage of flatus, of softened fæces containing imperfectly digested food, and distinct diarrhœa which proves curative.

The more violent attacks set in suddenly, usually within one or two hours after feeding. There are usually colicy pains, pawing, looking back at the flank, kicking of the abdomen with the hind feet, lying down, rolling, rising again quickly, yawning, anxious pinching of the countenance, rigid loins insensible to pinching, and heat and dryness with an acid odor in the mouth. There is soon observed some swelling and tension of the belly with tympanitic resonance on percussion in the left hypochondrium. There is no elevation of temperature as in gastritis, and no complete intermissions of pain as in spasmodic colic, but pain is continuous, though worse at one time than another. There is an utter indisposition to eat or drink and if liquids are given by force there is manifest aggravation of the sufferings. As a rule there is no rumbling of the bowels, and though the animal may strain violently, little or nothing is passed, except at the first a few moulded balls of dung. The bowels like the stomach are paralyzed. In some cases there are attempts at regurgitation, the fore feet are placed apart, the neck arched, the lower cervical muscles are contracted and the nose drawn in toward the breast. In some instances relief is obtained by belching gas or by actual vomiting of solid matters. Vomiting in the horse is always ground for suspicion, since it usually occurs when the muscular coat of the stomach is ruptured. An important hindrance to vomiting lies in the loose folds of the mucosa covering the cardia, in the flaccid condition, and as these folds may be entirely effaced in hernia of the mucosa through the muscular coat as well as in the overdistended condition, vomiting may be either a fatal or a favorable indication. If vomiting takes place, without attendant prostration and sinking, and if on the contrary there is manifest improvement after it, it may be looked on as a beneficent outcome.

If no such relief is obtained the patient becomes increasingly dull and stupid; the breathing is accelerated, short, moaning or wheezing; the nostrils dilated; the nasal mucosa dark red; the superficial veins, especially those of the face, are distended and prominent.

The nervous symptoms may vary. Usually the dullness increases to stupor, the animal rests his head on the manger or against the wall, or if at liberty he may move forward or around blindly until some obstacle is met and he stumbles over it or pushes against it. In some instances there is champing of the jaws, or irregular motions of the limbs, but more commonly the dullness goes on to stupor and coma, the animal falls helpless and dies in a state of profound insensibility.

If the stomach should become ruptured there is often vomiting, the ingesta escaping by the nose, without any relief of the general symptoms, but with an increasingly haggard expression of countenance, sunken eye, and accelerated, weak, and finally imperceptible pulse. Cold sweats, which may have been already present, become more marked and the prostration becomes more extreme and the abdominal tenderness more marked. There are muscular tremblings of the shoulders and thighs, dilatation of the pupils, rapid breathing and stupor which presages death.

Recovery may be hoped for if rumbling in the bowels commences anew, if defecations continue and become soft and liquid, if urine is passed abundantly and if the general symptoms are improved. Complete relief may be had in five or six hours, and even in protracted cases in two days.

Lesions. The body is swollen, tense and resonant; the rectum usually projects somewhat and is dark red; the intestines, small and large, are tympanitic; the stomach is double or triple its usual size, tense and resistant, and with its contents may weigh as much as 40 pounds. When cut open its contents are seen to be disposed in the order in which they were eaten, in stratified layers, the motions of the stomach have not operated to mix them. There is no sign of digestion, unless it be in a thin surface layer or film which may be white, pulpy and chymified. The cuticular mucosa is usually unchanged further than its attenuation by stretching, the alveolated mucosa also attenuated is congested, opaque or slightly inflamed. The great curvature may be the seat of a rupture the edges of which are slightly swollen, congested and covered with small blood clots. The escaping ingesta usually remains enclosed in the omentum, which thus looks like a larger stomach with extremely thin gauze-like walls. If this is ruptured then the food floats in masses among the convolutions of the intestines. The peritoneum is red, hemorrhagic and covered with more or less exudation.

Another occasional lesion is rupture of the diaphragm. The liver and spleen are usually small and comparatively bloodless, owing to the compression.

Diagnosis. This is largely based on the speedy supervention of the attack on a feed, the animal having been apparently well before, on the onset by slight colics, rapidly passing into great and continuous suffering and stupor, with tympanitic tension of the abdomen, and suppression of the intestinal movements, in the absence of any distinct or marked hyperthermia. The rapid progress to death or recovery is equally characteristic.

Treatment. In mild cases the prompt use of aromatics will sometimes succeed; tincture of pimento, anise or coriander 2 to 3 ounces, oil of peppermint, 20 to 30 drops. Stimulants, aqua ammonia, 1 to 2 drachms, largely diluted, ether 1 ounce, brandy or whisky 1 pint, will sometimes succeed. A good combination is dilute hydrochloric acid, 1 drachm, oil of turpentine 1 ounce, olive oil ½ pint.

Still more effective in the rousing of the torpid vermicular movements are eserine sulphate 1.5 grain or pilocarpin 2 grains, or barium chloride 7 grains subcutem.

These largely replace the old plan of giving a dose of aloes in bolus, yet in case of need aloes may still be given in ounce doses in cold water injections. The cold serves to rouse the vermicular movements of the bowels and sympathetically of the stomach.

Walking exercise, friction over the abdomen, and even electric currents through the epigastrium and left hypochondrium may be helpful.

In very urgent cases, 1 ounce to 2 ounces chloral hydrate is often effective. It acts as a powerful antiferment, checking further extrication of gas, and counteracts spasms of the bowels, so that gas passes more freely per anum, vermicular movements are resumed and recovery may be hoped for.

Puncture of the stomach through the external abdominal wall can only be effected by transfixing the transverse colon above which it lies and few have the hardihood to undertake this. It may, however, be punctured with comparative safety through the fourteenth to the seventeenth intercostal space in its upper half (Scammel). The overdistended stomach pressing forward on the left half of the diaphragm, applies that against the inner surface of the ribs, the lung being driven forward out of the way, and the liver and colon are also displaced, so that the trochar transfixes the skin, intercostal muscles, costal and phrenic pleura, diaphragm, peritoneum and stomach. The marked drumlike resonance on percussion indicates the best point for the puncture, and the trochar should be directed inward and slightly backward and pushed until solid resistance at its point ceases. As the intestines are usually tympanitic as well it may be requisite to puncture also the cæcum and colon, to restore the peristalsis of the alimentary tract generally. Antiseptics such as sulphurous acid, the sulphites, or hyposulphites, calcium chloride, bleaching powder, potassium permanganate or chloral hydrate, may be introduced through the cannula or by the mouth.

As far as the stomach is concerned, an effective relief can be had through the probang or stomach pump. A small one-half inch hollow probang may be safely passed through the nose and gullet into the stomach, and any gas or liquid allowed to escape. With proper attachments this may be fixed to a stomach pump and the viscus exhausted of all available liquid, after which an equal amount is pumped in and again withdrawn, until the contents are reduced to a normal amount. The water pumped in may be rendered antiseptic by sodium chloride, sodium bisulphite, or other antiferment, so that further extrication of gas will be prevented. If it is necessary to use the ordinary probang or stomach tube introduced through the mouth, great care must be taken in introducing it to see that the soft palate does not deflect it downward into the larynx. Its presence in the gullet above and beyond the larynx can be felt by manipulation from without, and until this is ascertained it should on no account be pushed onward.

The importance of a measure of mechanical relief such as this, is the greater that the stomach of the soliped is non-absorbing, and relief from undue pressure of contents can only be had by their passage upward or downward. Then again, the horse cannot vomit like the carnivora and omnivora, nor regurgitate like ruminants, and if left to himself with engorged stomach, his case is hopeless indeed.

The contingent weakness in cases of recovery may demand careful feeding and a course of bitter tonics.