DISEASES OF THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS. G73 



abundantly, causes distension, inflammation, paralysis, and even 

 rupture. This is accounted for by the circumstance that food 

 thus imperfectly prepared for digestion is retained or imprisoned 

 by the action of the pyloric structures, and thus distends the 

 stomach by its bulk, or by gases evolved by the process of 

 fermentation, which is apt to ensue. By bearing these facts 

 in remembrance, the practitioner will to some extent be able to 

 arrive at a correct idea of the seat of gastric or intestinal disease. 



The food of the horse contains an abundant quantity of starchy 

 materials, and the process by which these are rendered soluble 

 commences in the mouth, not only by tlieir admixture with the 

 salivary secretions, but by a chemical change, through which the 

 non-soluble starch is converted into dextrine and grape sugar, 

 and made fit for the action of the intestinal, biliary, and gastric 

 secretions, and for absorption by the vessels of the gastric and 

 intestinal walls. For the purpose of performing this process the 

 horse is provided with twenty-four mill-stones, in the form of 

 molar teeth, which have the power of crushing and triturating 

 the hardest food, and of an extensive system of salivary organs, 

 which secrete — most actively during the process of mastication 

 — a fluid which most effectively blends with, and chemically 

 changes, the food thus triturated. On this account we find that, 

 when horses are sufficiently but not over-abundantly fed with 

 dry food of a proper quality, the stomach rarely suffers from 

 disease. An error in the diet, however, or a sudden change from 

 one kind of food to another, not only deranges the stomach, but 

 the intestinal canal as well. 



In the ox and sheep, the large and complicated stomach not only 

 digests, but also prepares the food for digestion. For example, 

 ruminating animals eat and swallow the coarsest food very 

 rapidly, and they are provided with a large receptacle for its 

 retention, in which it undergoes maceration and reduction to 

 smaller particles by a slow churning movement in the rumen 

 and reticulum, which facilitates its trituration during the process 

 of rumination and after-solution by the digestive fluids. 



Without entering further into a physiological consideration of 

 the process of digestion, it will be seen that the stomach of the 

 ox much more actively participates in the process of digestion 

 than that of the horse, and that it is thus rendered more liable 

 to disorder in its first and second, as well as its third and fourth 

 compartments, than the simple, single stomach of the horse. 



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