388 SPASMODIC COLIC. 



ness will bring it on. Tumours in the mesentery, and stric- 

 tures in the bowels, are also the sources of occasional colic. 

 When a horse is found to be subject to repeated attacks, 

 something of this kind, or abdominal concretions, may 

 aptly be suspected ; and we have known many instances 

 where habitual colic was dependent on this last cause. 

 Horses long confined to dry food will sometimes get out 

 and suddenly gorge themselves with green meat ; and with 

 others, a constitutional tendency fi'om some occult cause 

 gives them a predisposition to colic. 



The symptoms of spasmodic colic are usually sudden in 

 their appearance, and not marked, as in inflammation of the 

 bowels, by previous indisposition ; but the horse is observed 

 to be at once attacked with considerable uneasiness, shifting 

 his position from side to side, pawing his litter, and stamp- 

 ing with his feet impatiently. After a few minutes thus 

 passed, the pain remits, and leaves the horse perfectly easy ; 

 he then resumes his eating. In enteritis no perfect re- 

 missions occur, but all is one scene of nearly equable pain 

 and distress, though never actually amounting to the agony 

 of spasmodic colic. As the colic advances, the remissions 

 are less perfect, and less fi'equent : the horse now lies down 

 occasionally, and on rising shakes himself, looking round to 

 his sides, at which sometimes, in desperate cases, he snaps 

 with his teeth ; but more frequently he is seen to strike with 

 his hind feet at his belly, as though determined to remove 

 by force the cause of his pain. In enteritis this acuteness 

 of sensation or violence of temper is seldom seen. When 

 on the ground, it is not uncommon for the horse to roll on 

 his back. In colic the pulse is seldom much altered from 

 its natural state, unless the colic has existed some time, 

 when it occasionally presents marks of general irritation, 

 and is not only quickened, but also somewhat hardened. If 

 it can be felt also during the intensity of the paroxysms, it 

 will likewise be often found to be disturbed even in the early 

 stage ; but this is momentary only, and ceases on the re- 

 mission of the pain. Under the immediate influence of 

 the existing spasm, it will in some instances present a 

 full bounding accelerated stroke ; but more often a wiry 

 thready though quickened beat, both of which may be mis- 

 taken for inflammation. The extremities, as the legs and 



