4 THE COMMON COLICS OF THE HORSE 



order to arrive at a diagnosis that will approach with any 

 degree of accuracy to the truth. 



The human surgeon, by clear and incisive reasoning 

 deduced from the symptoms observed by himself, and the 

 help afforded him by his patient, has the power of making 

 such subtle distinctions in the different varieties of colic 

 as to render his skill in diagnosis an object of admiration 

 to the veterinarian. 



One word of warning is necessary to the animal surgeon. 

 His admiration of the human physician's diagnosis must 

 not lead him to follow blindly those symptoms and treat- 

 ments laid out in medical literature. 



I am well aware that in very many diseases there is 

 an extremely close analogy between the veterinary and 

 human patient, both in regard to the symptoms and the 

 treatment. That, however, is not the case with colic. 



The ordinary text-book on human medicine seldom 

 devotes more than a few pages to its consideration. Its 

 treatment, unless it be the colic due to hernia or other 

 equally serious cause, is comparatively simple, and 

 occasions the physician no alarm. He administers an 

 opiate, and, where occasion demands, combines the 

 sedative with a brisk purgative. 



That done, the case is comfortably dismissed from his 

 mind. He is not unduly anxious about pains whose 

 continuance is spread over three or four days — nay, even 

 weeks. 



Compare that with the twelve to forty-eight or sixty 

 hours of anxious watching that so often falls to the lot of 

 the veterinarian — a two days' hurried, anxious solicitude 

 into which is crammed the diagnosis and treatment of 

 three weeks. To illustrate my point, compare the cases 

 of intestinal obstruction in the horse and the human 

 patient. 



