168 ELEMENTS OF HIPPOLOGY. 



ready fine enough to be swallowed and their smooth hulls offer 

 no obstacle to that process. These hulls are insoluble in the 

 juices of the stomach, and, if the oat grain has not been crushed 

 by the teeth, the kernel of the grain passes through the horse 

 unchanged. If it is imperfectly crushed, it will be only partially 

 digested in the stomach, and will pass on to the intestines, to 

 ferment there and to generate gases there that will cause distress 

 and often disease. 



Owing to the uniformity in diet and the regular hours of 

 feeding, labor, and rest of most well-kept horses, diseases of the 

 digestive apparatus are comparatively infrequent among that 

 class of horses. They are the most easily preventable of all 

 equine diseases. Unfortunately, many horses are not well kept, 

 and, as a result, "the disease of the horse that is most frequent- 

 ly met with is what is termed colic. This term is applied 

 loosely to almost all diseases of the abdomen that are accom- 

 panied by pain. If the horse evinces abdominal pain, he is 

 likely to be put down as suffering with colic, no matter whether 

 the difficulty be a cramp of the bowel, an internal hernia, over- 

 loading of the stomach, or a painful disease of the bladder or 

 liver. 



"The general symptoms of abdominal pain, and therefore 

 of colic, are restlessness, cessation of whatever the horse is about, 

 lying down, looking around towards the flank, jerky switching 

 of the tail, stretching as if to urinate, frequent changes of posi- 

 tion, and groaning. In the more intense forms the horse plunges 

 about, throws himself down, rolls, assumes unnatural positions, 

 as sitting on the haunches, and grunts loudly. Usually the pain 

 is not constant, and during the intermissions the horse may eat 

 and appear normal. During the period of pain, sweat is poured 

 out freely. Sometimes the horse moves constantly in a circle. 

 The respirations are accelerated, and usually there is no fever." 



