DISEASES OF THE STOMACH AND BOWELS. 307 



CHAPTER Xni. 



DISEASES OF THE STOMACH AND BOWELS. 



The digestive organs of the horse, particularly the stomach 

 and bowels, are more subject to disease than any others; 

 while, from their location and their peculiar service in 

 the animal economy, it is more difficult to understand the 

 minutiae of their structure and functions than those of any 

 other portions of his system, except the lungs. Besides 

 the embarrassment to which the latter circumstance gives 

 riise in treating intestinal diseases, there is this additional 

 one: that the symptoms exhibited are so varied that the 

 practitioner is often in great danger of being entirely misled 

 as to the real nature and causes of the disorder. 



The stomach is the receptacle of not merely what the 

 horse eats as food, but likewise of every nostrum which 

 ignorance and quackery can force into it, and which too 

 often itself proves the fruitful source of disease. To its 

 inner coating a merciful Creator has given a degree of 

 msensibility, which, though its only safeguard, is a power- 

 ful one ; yet even this is not always sufficient to protect it 

 from the dire effects of the poisons poured into it. Con- 

 sidered in relation to the bulk of his entire body, and es- 

 pecially to the enormous capacity of the abdominal cavity, 

 the stomach of the horse is very small, being only three or 

 four times as large as in man, whose body is scarcely one- 

 tenth the size of that of his faithful servitor. It contains 

 but two or three gallons, while the intestines, when fully 

 expanded, have a. capacity of from twenty to twenty-four. 



So far as is known, it is provided with no gastric 

 agencies, and conducts the process of digestion no further 



