COLIC. 651 



tlie canal, is to increase very largely the percentage of colic 

 cases. 



Bad as this excessive feeding is, even when the food is of 

 the best quahty and most suitable character, it is infinitely 

 worse when it is of an improper form and inferior quality. 

 Under this description I am disposed to place the greater 

 number of varieties of cooked food, both grains and roots, 

 especially Avhen used as feeding materials for horses in severe 

 and rather rapid work. Such foods are in some districts of the 

 country, and for some varieties of animals, largely employed as 

 an evening meal. That cases of colic and severe gastric dis- 

 turbance should occur where horses, particularly hard- wrought 

 horses, are treated to heavy evening meals of a character 

 totally unfitted for their digestive apparatus, is not to be 

 wondered at. 



If food taken in excessive amount by healthy horses is liable 

 to induce disturbance and arrest of digestion, a similar train of 

 untoward results is more likely to follow where the normal 

 vigour and activity of the digestive organs is impaired by 

 exhausting work or other lowering influences. The vital 

 energies being in abeyance, the process of digestion is so far 

 arrested that the ingesta, instead of yielding its nutritious 

 material to the system and gradually passing out of it, is 

 detained, and in its detention acts as an irritant to those struc- 

 tures with which it may be in contact; in addition to which 

 the disturbance is further aggravated by the changes which 

 take place with this unaltered ingesta through the action of 

 chemical forces. In this manner are produced not only the 

 spasmodic state of the intestinal muscular structure, but also 

 the considerable accumulations of gas which are occasionally 

 so distressing and so dangerous. 



Besides ordinary food in excessive quantities, and indifferent, 

 bad, or unsuitable food in any quantity, and the reception of 

 all varieties of food in conditions when the digestive organs 

 are unfit to deal with it for healthy appropriation, we find that 

 certain kinds of food, with particular animals, have a special 

 tendency to induce gastric and intestinal irritation. In such 

 cases of individual idiosyncrasy we ought to be guided by 

 timely warning, and withhold what is evidently antagonistic 

 to the maintenance of healthy digestion. 



