SPASMODIC COLIC. 313 



SPASMODIC COLIC. 



The nosology of farriers furnishes no appellations so 

 vaguely comprehensive in their meaning, or so likely to 

 mislead, as those of colic, gripes, cramp, fret, &c. By such 

 persons they are used, synonymously, to denote an assem- 

 blage of symptoms which experience has taught us are pro- 

 duced by some painful disease of the bowels, but of what 

 nature or in what part, they leave us totally uninformed. 

 We hear of flatulent colic, stercoral colic, calculous colic, 

 nervous or spasmodic colic, verminous colic, inflammatory 

 colic, and we are continually called to cases of " gripes,^^ 

 which turn out to be anything save what we who restrict 

 the meaning of the phrase can regard as such. In fact, 

 while farriers^ colic leaves us to guess w^hether the disease 

 consist in wind, in dung, in spasm, in calculi, in worms, or 

 in inflammation ; farriers' gripes merely signifies that the 

 animal is labouring under some acute pains which are pro- 

 bably connected with bowel-disease, though now and then 

 the case turns out to be a pleurisy! In order to guard 

 against all this looseness of expression and the danger it 

 may create, the best way will be, probably, to pay no 

 attention to the appellations colic and gripes, save so far as 

 they are used to denote what, in truth, is the veritable gripe, 

 or ginp, ov grasp, viz., spasm of the bowels, or, spasmodic colic. 



Spasm consists in a contraction of some portion or portions, 

 of the intestinal tube. The tube, by virtue of its muscular 

 coat, possesses a power of contracting its canal, which con- 

 tractile property it is that enables it to press the alimentary 

 matters onward from the stomach until they arrive at their 

 ultimate destination — the anus. This muscular tunic, in 

 common with other muscles, is liable to spasm or cramp; 

 when which takes place, the intestinal canal is locally con- 

 tracted to that degree that the aliment is, at the place or 

 places of spasm, arrested in its course, and the pain, while 

 the cramp or gripe continues, proves of the most exquisite 

 and poignant character. 



