€12 CERTAIX GASTRIC SYMPTOMS AND FUNCTIONAL DISORDERS. 



and respirations are uniformly increased in frequency and 

 somewhat altered in character ; where the condition of coma 

 exists both of these are less frequent, and the pulse is full and 

 of considerable resisting power. These latter are the true 

 stomach staggers of the older writers, and from all accounts it 

 would appear that this form of indigestion and gastric dis- 

 turbance must in former days have had a more extensive 

 distribution than can be accredited to it in our day. 



Course and Termmation. — Mild cases of engorgement of the 

 stomach, many of which are spoken of as colic, even when 

 a,ttended with uneasiness and pain, may of themselves become 

 relieved ; this more certainly Avhen the material causing the 

 distension is soft in character and likely to undergo removal 

 rather easily, or in cases where the animals have not been 

 previously debilitated by exhausting work or the organ itself 

 weakened through former attacks of a similar nature. The 

 more severe cases, however, are, if left to themselves, rather 

 disposed to terminate fatally, either by gastritis, rupture of the 

 coats of the stomach, or through cerebral complications. Such 

 fatal cases are often seen where the animal has received the 

 full meal, the direct inducing cause, into a weakened and ex- 

 hausted stomach, as the last treatment of the day, and is then 

 left to itself for the night. We have found that horses which 

 are habitually greedy feeders, or which have for years been 

 fed on bulky and innutritions food, by which the coats of the 

 stomach have become unnaturally attenuated, are more liable 

 than animals differently circumstanced to become the subjects 

 of fatal distension of the organ. 



Prevention and Treatment. — Amongst the entire class of 

 diseases of the digestive organs which, as a class, may be 

 regarded as eminently capable of being circumscribed by 

 attention to the common rules of dietary, there is probably 

 none so dependent for its existence on neglect of these as this 

 gastric indigestion following engorgement. 



If those who have the charge of our agricultural and heavier 

 draught horses could only be brought to understand that these 

 creatures are living, not inanimate, machines, that their 

 stomachs have naturally only a limited capacity, and that food 

 may not be received into that organ beyond a certain amount 

 without impairing or destroying its powers of acting upon it, 



