COLIC. 653 



such as have been rather indifferently treated in every respect, 

 grazed upon poor, damp, badly conditioned land, and where 

 deficiency of shelter has been a marked feature ; this intestinal 

 disorder and general unthriftiness not usually exhibiting them- 

 selves until the animals have been taken in hand, or better 

 treated, receiving more and better food, and having the advan- 

 tage of comfortable lodgings. In some of their forms these 

 cases are rather refractory, requiring much time and attention^ 

 and not unfrequently, particularly if their treatment has been 

 delayed until the emaciation is confirmed, terminating un- 

 favourably. 



The existence of parasites in the large bloodvessels supply- 

 ing the intestines — the mesenteric arteries — has by certain 

 pathologists on the Continent, particularly in some of the 

 German States, been considered a fruitful source of ordinary 

 colic. That these vessels are often the habitat of particular 

 nematoid worms, and that, with the presence of these existences, 

 we find a diseased condition of the vessel in which they are 

 found, as also that many horses have died, having previously 

 exhibited severe symptoms of colic, in which, after death, both 

 this arterial disease and parasitic invasion were manifest, is un- 

 doubtedly true. And we will even go further, by saying that 

 in many instances there seems evidence to satisfy that this 

 condition of verminous aneurism of the mesenteric vessels 

 does operate in inducing much functional disturbance of the 

 intestinal canal, and in some fatal results ; but that it is a 

 common cause or a usual accompaniment of ordinary colic or 

 other fatal bowel affections in this country, after-death exami- 

 nations do not bear out. 



4. Organic Disease of the Intestines. — Under this we may 

 rank glandular disease of the mesentery, a not unfrequent 

 accompaniment or sequel of strangles in the irregular form ; 

 also chronic disease of the structures entering into the forma- 

 tion of the walls of the tube, usually of a degenerative and 

 atrophic nature ; and some rarer instances of change, probably 

 malignant. In such the cohcky symptoms are usually per- 

 sistent ; they may be remittent, or even intermittent, seldom 

 entirely removed, while the termination may be said to be in- 

 variably fatal. 



5. The Reception of Irritant Poisons.— The&e may proceed 



