INTESTINAL CONCRETIONS. 349 



subject to these formations, from the circumstance of their 

 food consisting principally of bran and mill-dust. The mill- 

 stones must necessarily impart more or less of their sub- 

 stance to whatever they grind into dust or meal, and this 

 gritty or calculous matter it is which becomes afterwards 

 the principal component of the concretion. 



Symptoms. — Numerous instances have occurred of nothing 

 having been known or suspected of the existence of calculi, 

 until they have been accidentally discovered after death. 

 Indeed, from w^hat knowledge we possess of them in living 

 bodies, it would appear that they rarely trouble the animal 

 in any way during their collection or formation ; not at all, 

 indeed, until their volume proves such as to block up the 

 passage ; and then (the same as an internal stricture) 

 they bring on inflammation of the bowel, mortification, and 

 death. It is possible they may, however, without obstruct- 

 ing, irritate the bowel, and in that manner occasion the 

 horse paroxysms of pain, giving rise to symptoms indis- 

 tinguishable by us from enteritis. Mr. Hurford, V.S., 15th 

 Hussars, remarks to me, it is surprising what a quantity of dirt 

 (gravel and clay) the horses in India, picquetted out in the 

 open air, will eat ; he has seen the mucous lining of the 

 colon coated with mud. In another case, which recovered, 

 Mr. Hurford weighed the quantity of gravel passed daily 

 with the dung, and found it in the end to amount to 

 121bs. Ijoz. ! When the bowel becomes obstructed, 

 the horse is attacked with what is supposed to be ordinary 

 " gripes ;^' and treatment in accordance with such belief is at 

 first instituted. The pulse, however, does not become 

 thready, as in colic, neither is there any excitement in its 

 beat denotive of inflammation. But the pains grow sharper, 

 and continue undiminished, without any decided or lengthened 

 remission of them as happens in colic, and they in this 

 manner continue until inflammation, which has now attacked 

 the gut, has ended in mortification of the obstructed parts 

 of it; and then they all at once subside, and are apt by their 

 cessation to give rise to the deceptive belief that the animal 

 is about to recover. All the while there is, of course, 



