<354 INTESTIXAL SY.MPTOMS AND FUNCTIONAL DISORDERS. 



110 furtlicr tlian tlie production of functional disturbance, or 

 they may induce inflammatory changes. 



6. Tlte Influence of Gold and Damp on the General Surface 

 ■i)f the Body may be provocative of intestinal disturbance, in- 

 dicated by abdominal pain. 



c. Anatomical Gharacters. — The number of fatal results from 

 the occurrence of simple colic, apart from complications — as 

 mechanical obstruction, entanglement of the bowel, rupture of 

 it^ coats, or from the arrest placed on the due performance of 

 respiration from compression of the thoracic viscera, the result 

 of tympany, together with the ulterior changes attendant on 

 these mechanical conditions — is not great. In some, constriction 

 or contraction, more or less distinct, of one or more portions of 

 the bowel, due apparently to persistent contraction of the 

 muscular structure, has been noticed. Accompanying this state 

 of continued spasm there may exist a peculiar degenerative 

 change of both mucous lining and submucous connective-tissue 

 ■of a colloid character, occupying a rather extensive tract of the 

 tube both in the small and large bowel. 



When colic has been the result of intestinal helminthiasis 

 the existence of the parasites is usually attractive. As the 

 large nematodes they may be found collected in heaps or 

 bunches in the lumen of the tube ; oftener as the small tetra- 

 canthus strongyle, we find them embedded in the tissues of 

 the bowel, chiefly the large — the number of distinct points of 

 irritation often forming, by coalescing, an extensive tract en- 

 gorged and hyperremic, studded with numerous spots or sores 

 where the worms are coiled up, or from which they have 

 escaped. Verminous aneurisms of the mesenteric arteries have 

 also been found to exist, and to these have been attributed the 

 cause of the muscular spasms ; their presence in the horse, 

 even in fatal cases of bowel disease, is neither constant nor 

 common. 



Symptoms. — Although very many, probably the large majority, 

 of cases of colic have the symptoms of illness developed 

 suddenly, there are yet many in which, if the animal were 

 watched carefully, and we were conversant with his entire 

 history, it would be found that this suddenness was more 

 apparent than real ; that some days previous to the attack a 

 certain amount of indisposition — indigestion it might be — or 



