SPASMODIC COLIC. 315 



torture continue unmitigated, is one bordering on delirium : 

 he grows heedless of all around him; his eyes turn wild and 

 frantic ; his violent precipitations render all approach to him 

 perilous ; cold sweats bedew his body ; tremors succeed ; he 

 falls or throws himself down_, maddened and exhausted with 

 pain, and in convulsions probably expires. The pulse at the 

 onset of the disease, and during the remissions from pain, is 

 but little altered; but while the paroxysm endures it grows 

 frequent, and becomes contracted to a thread ; indeed, at 

 times is so indistinct as hardly to be felt at all. Under ex- 

 tremity of suffering, its quickness, and with that its strength 

 and perceptibility, become augmented. The heWj grows 

 tense, sometimes perceptibly swollen, and commonly very 

 tender to pressure. The bowels are constipated, though 

 oftentimes dung will be passed on the eve of the attack and 

 some time afterwards ; and this is a circumstance the tyro 

 in practice must take care not to suffer himself to be deceived 

 by. I have known a horse have three evacuations after 

 being attacked, and, after all, die of unopened bowels. In 

 the height of his pain the animal will not unfrequently void 

 his urine. 



Diagnosis. — To this, as enabling us to distinguish spas- 

 modic colic from enteritis, great importance, by the generality 

 of practitioners, has been attached, on the score of the 

 remedies prescribed for spasm being, of all others, the most 

 improper ones for inflammation. I was once of this way of 

 thinking myself; but I find, as I grow older in experience, 

 that my practice is becoming of a kind suitable to both cases, 

 and consequently that such diagnosis with me is losing 

 much of its interest. In the year 1824 I first made the 

 experiment of combining my antispasmodic with a cathartic, 

 and I became so satisfied with the result that I have, from 

 that time to the present, continued the practice, and, I may 

 add, with the happiest consequences. Still, it is proper that 

 we should be made a«^uainted with the best diagnostics 

 between colic and enteritis, and, according to my observation, 

 they are as follow : — 1st, colic is not ushered in by any 

 antecedent indisposition, or any cold, or hot, or shivering 



