THE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. 133 



want of knowledge on the part of horsemen regarding the phys- 

 iological action of the stomach. If a man ever becomes intem- 

 perate, it is generally from habit, and the same may be said of 

 the horse. Those who have experienced the cravings of a 

 depraved appetite can sympathize with the four-footed creature, 

 who, after devouring his provender, sets to work on the bedding, 

 and finishes his meal from the boards which compose the stall 

 and crib. A very extraordinary case of a depraved feeder is 

 recorded by a French veterinary surgeon : " Neither manger, 

 nor rack, nor the fragments of the bars escaped him ; he gnawed 

 his halter, and licked the walls, and ate up all the earth he could 

 get at. He was a confirmed crib-biter and roarer. For many 

 years he had been subject to violent colics, which became latterly 

 more and more frequent. In one of these paroxysms, at last, he 

 died. There were found in his stomach, after death, four pounds 

 and a half of earth and sand. He had, as was learned after- 

 wards, escaped from his groom on the morning of the day he 

 died, and galloped to the riding school, where he was found 

 eating the earth and sand composing the floor. A brass wire, 

 about the size of a knitting needle, and eight or nine inches long, 

 was found sticking in the intestines, through whose walls it had 

 penetrated, and had run into the lumbar muscles." 



Foreign bodies are sometimes found in the stomachs of horses 

 after death, which do not seem to occasion much inconvenience 

 during life ; thus many hundred bots have been found within 

 that cavity without the subject being at all incommoded by them. 

 The stomach terminates in that part known as its pyloric outlet, 

 or inferior portion, from whence commences the duodenum, 

 known as the second stomach. See cut of the stomach and 

 intestines. 



INFLAMMATION OF THE BOWELS. — {Enteritis.) 



Cause. — This disease arises under circumstances so wholly 

 dissimilar, that different and even opposite causes are assigned 

 to the same affection ; that is to say, different causes appear to 

 produce the same results. Thus inflammation of the bowels may 

 supervene immediately after exposure in a rain storm, or from 

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