C42 INTESTINAL SYMPTOMS AND FUNCTIONAL DISORDERS. 



rather than as the result of an overdose of medicine, seeing 

 such superpurgation may follow the administration of such 

 an amount of any particular cathartic as, if employed at 

 some other time, would not induce such annoying results. 

 The peculiar systemic conditions operating to induce this idio- 

 syncrasy may be, and often are, beyond our means of detection ; 

 at other times they are perfectly appreciable. 



A horse under the action of an ordinary dose of purgative 

 medicine, if supplied with an unlimited amount of cold water 

 while the medicine is freely operating, if put to work, or unduly 

 exposed to damp or cold, is very liable to suffer from excessive 

 purgation. Over-purgation from the exhibition of a cathartic 

 is always annoying, but need not unduly alarm, unless the 

 animal gives evidence of constitutional disturbance, such as 

 total failure of appetite, continued watery diarrhoea, or painful 

 tenesmus, pulse of increased frequenc}^ weak or small, with 

 rigors and partial sweats, much prostration, and if in a box 

 an inclination to wander. 



B. DIARRHCEA OF THE YOUNG. 



In adult horses diarrhoea may be regarded as a benign 

 affection, not usually having a fatal termination ; in the very 

 young, however, it possesses characters rather unique, and 

 is attended with serious or fatal results ; the same holds true 

 to even a greater extent when it appears in the bovine 

 and ovine species. This condition may in all these animals 

 exhibit some diversity in its manifestations in the different 

 species and in individuals of the same species, but in all it 

 seems essentially the same disorder. The great character- 

 istic feature is functional disturbance intimately associated 

 with the process of digestion, together with a specific intestinal 

 catarrh and a perverted condition of the secretion from the 

 gastric and intestinal mucous membrane, apart from any very 

 marked inflammatory or structural changes either in the 

 intestines or organs associated with them. Inflammatory 

 lesions may occur, but they are neither diagnostic nor 

 common. 



This form of diarrhoea is said to appear occasionally in some 

 countries as an epizobty, committing great havoc amongst 

 young stock ; as such I have often enough encountered it in 



