ENTERITIS. S27 



The Seat of Inflation is the large intestines — the 

 caecum and colon : were it the stomach alone, we should 

 have no such outward and visible signs of the distension. 

 And the 



Cause of it, is either indigestion or crib-biting. It may 

 result — and I believe often does — from spasmodic colic : 

 the spasmed condition of the intestines interfering with the 

 passage through them^ and consequently with the process 

 of digestion. 



The Consequences of this inflated bowel may be such as 

 to place the horse in the same perilous state as the hoven ox, 

 an extreme case that will, perhaps, warrant the employment 

 of the same remedy ; though it must be borne in mind, that, 

 as the two animals have differently constructed alimentary 

 apparatus, an operation which may prove quite harmless in 

 one might be attended with great danger, or even loss of 

 life, in the other. This, however, in the present instance, 

 we are assured is not the case. Both in France, and in our 

 own country, the abdomen has been trochared, not only with- 

 out that danger which might have been anticipated, but with 

 such results as would lead, in all hopeless cases at least, to 

 a repetition of the operation. Of this, an account has been 

 already given under ^'Tympanitic Stomach'^ (at p. 265-6). I 

 may here repeat, that the trocar used for the intestine, ought 

 to be not larger than that used for hydrocele by surgeons, 

 but, at least, twice as long. Sir Henry Marsh has relieved 

 cases of excessive distension of the abdomen from flatus, (in 

 the human subject,) by introducing a fine trocar. 



ENTERITIS. 



The intestines are composed of three layers ot substance, 

 called coats, any one of which may become the seat of in- 

 flammation, to the exclusion — although all three are inti- 

 mately connected — of the other two ; or, at least, so far to 

 their exclusion that the others appear to be but secondarily 

 and comparatively mildly affected. Enteritis consists in an 

 inflammation of the middle or muscular coat — that which 



