278 NATURAL FOOD. 



Thus if you drink a pint of cold water auH sit still afterwards in 

 a low temperature, you will find that most of it f^oes off by the 

 kidneys ; if you go into the high temperature of a Turkish bath, 

 it will go off by the skin ; if you take active exercise imme- 

 diately after drinking, the other two drains will take their 

 full share, so that even the bowels may be sensibly affected 

 by it. 



DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 



678. — The bowels necessarily carry off the innutritions 

 woody fibre, and any other materials that are not extracted from 

 the prepared food by the lacteals, and taken into the blood. They 

 should also carry out the bile, and some of the coarser excretions 

 from the blood, from which they also receive some degree of 

 lubrication and healthy, natural excitement. The human bowels 

 will not work pleasantly, and the horse's bowels will not work at 

 all unless they have a large proportion of W'Oody fibre, or coarse, 

 bulky, inadhesive material to pass on and work upon. The 

 horse is quickly and most painfully killed by unmixed wheat, 

 and if he could or would eat it, would be more certainly killed by 

 fine flour, although many men, and many books recommend it, even 

 for locked jaw and inflamed bowels. ^The bowels of both horses 

 and men are most frequently and most severely taxed by being 

 called on to pass densely nutritious food, without a sufficient 

 proportion of the rough, bulky, light, woody fibre, found in all 

 the natnral food of the horse. 



670. — The bowels of the horse, can always be kept working 

 pleasantly and healthfully, by supplying them with suitable 

 material to work on, and avoiding those sudden and extreme 

 chansfes which give the delicate and sensitive tubes no time to 

 adapt themselves to their altered work. More or less nutritious 

 corn, more or less hay, straw, or other woody fibre, more or less 

 wet bran, more or less soft pulp, more or less green food, are the 

 simple agents by which the bowels of any horse can be kept in 

 healthy, Avorking order, without attacking them with any of the 

 destructive poisons we have learned to call medicines. 



680. — Yery cold or hard well water is liable to disagree with 



