ACUTE IXDIGESTION — GORGED STOMACH, ETC. 61S 



owners of liorses would be saved much money, and tlie 

 animals of wliicli they have the charge much suft'ermg. The 

 stomach of these animals is too often treated as if it were 

 little difterent from a corn-box, a simple food-receptacle, into 

 which it is advisable to thrust as large a quantity of material, 

 without regard to its character, as possible. 



Of the truth of these statements I have been abundantly 

 satisfied during a practice of many years in an agricultural 

 district. In this district horses are as hard wrought and as 

 Hberally fed as anywhere in Great Britain ; in no case is there 

 any stinting of food, or the giving of it of inferior quality for 

 the mere purpose of saving money. At the period of which I 

 speak the usual scale of dietary was oats ad libitum, or from 

 eighteen to twenty-three pounds per horse per day, with oat- 

 straw as fodder during two-thirds of the year, and rye-grass 

 ha}^ the remaining third. Four or six nights in the week the 

 evening feed of oats during certain seasons of the year was re- 

 placed by a feed of boiled barley ; this latter I found was 

 much relished by the horses, but the quantity given was 

 greatly in excess of what any horse ought to receive at one 

 time. This evening feeding with cooked grains I found a 

 most fruitful source of indigestion ; it was greedily eaten 

 after a full and often hard day's work, its quantity bemg 

 in many instances too severe a task for a somewhat exhausted 

 stomach to dispose of ere fermentative and other changes had 

 taken place, and by gaseous elimination further increasing 

 the difficulties. 



During the season when this system of dieting was most 

 industriously carried out, and amongst those animals that 

 regularly received it, there was invariably a much larger 

 number of cases of illness wholly connected with the digestive 

 organs, and chiefly gastric, than where cooked food was not 

 employed. At this time the loss amongst this class of horses 

 from diseases of the digestive organs was over five per cent. 

 Gradually, in course of years, the same agriculturists have 

 seen cause to alter their views on this matter of horse-feeding, 

 and for some time the use of cooked food has been abandoned, 

 and with its abandonment the sickness and death-rate have 

 fallen fifty per cent. 



Horses, for the full and healthy exercise of digestion, do not 



