SURGICAL TREATMENT OF COLICS 79 



may follow acute intestinal indigestion or may arrive as 

 an initial condition. Where horses are fed largely upon 

 dry fodder for months, it is very common and horses 

 worked hard and fed well to keep up their condition 

 are also very susceptible. In hard-worked city horses 

 it often follows periods of idleness where the ration has 

 not been reduced, and horses idle from some locomo- 

 tory disability may fall victims while unable to take suffi- 

 cient exercise to keep up the intestinal activity. 



Pathologically, impaction of the colon, as seen in 

 horses, is a partial or complete paralysis of the walls 

 of the colon. The word "paralysis" applies best to this 

 condition because the muscularis after being overwhelmed 

 into a state of enfeeblement, fails to contract. 



Symptoms. — The symptoms are quite character- 

 istic. Indeed, there is little excuse for not making an 

 early diagnosis in every case. The pain is mild and at 

 first intermittent. The right flank, compared carefully 

 with the left, is slightly bulged and sometimes bloated. 

 During the first hour or two the feces are voided fre- 

 quently in small quantities, but this ceases as soon as the 

 floating colon is empty. On auscultation of the right 

 flank the borborygmus is found feeble or absent, and on 

 exploration per rectum there is little trouble found in lo- 

 cating the solid contents of the colon. 



When the pain is more acute the patient may sit dog- 

 fashion or at times stretch out as a male does in the act 

 of urination. The absorption of toxic products may cause 

 some elevation of temperature, in rare cases, early in the 

 course of the disease, but more often there is but little 

 rise in the body temperature until the patient is in a 



