136 The Management and Treatment of the Horse, 



cake gruel to drink. At four o'clock she seemed much 

 better, so I gave a four-drachm physic ball and left. At 

 eleven o'clock next day all the bad symptoms had dis- 

 appeared. She would eat nothing, but drank small quan- 

 tities of gruel, purging took place in twelve hours and 

 continued for twenty-four, after which she gradually 

 recovered. My attention was not directed to the character 

 of the food until nineteen days afterwards, ond when I 

 visited the place where the grass had been cut from, it was 

 a complete thicket of flowerless branches and roots of 

 ranunculacee, the characters of which I was unable to 

 determine ; from the absence of flowers and fruit, I was 

 convinced that the food in question was largely composed 

 of common buttercup, which the hungry, exhausted animal 

 had greedily devoured. That the ranunculacee possess 

 acrid properties no one will deny, and that they are capable 

 when taken in large quantity of inducing vomition in the 

 horse may be fairly inferred. No other article of provender 

 with which we are acquainted being capable of producing 

 similar symptoms, even when the stomach is filled to 

 repletion, and when rupture occurs through any other 

 kind of food, there is never the same train of symptoms 

 as are observed in all cases of ranunculacee poisoning." 

 The author has during the last few years met with many 

 cases similar to the one above quoted, and has always 

 adopted, the same mode of treatment with the exception 

 of administering one pint and a-half of linseed oil instead 

 of a physic ball, and if there seems much irritation of the 

 throat and coughing, stimulate the throat with white oils 

 or Gregory's Versico Sudorific. 



