ENTERITIS 183 



he is good to it ; it does well and thrives. He is proud 

 of his bargain, and suddenly on the road it takes ill, and 

 in a couple of hours you tell him to prepare for the worst, 

 for though his horse will live to the morning, it will 

 certainly die. A horse passes your place with his load at 

 nine o'clock in the morning, goes three miles, is seized, 

 returns, and by twelve o'clock lies a carcass in your box, 

 after a few hours' ceaseless agony. This is worse than 

 cholera. What is this disease ? You examine the 

 carcass, and find the veins, superficial and deep, filled 

 with black, fluid, tarry-looking blood ; the abdomen 

 quarter full of thin, watery, dark-purple, or rusty- 

 coloured serum ; the stomach and bowels wuth consider- 

 able contents, but not more than many a healthy horse 

 in full feeding. The mucous membrane of stomach 

 congested, and its villous portion iniiamed and eroded ; 

 the secretions sour and acid, and their contents acrid and 

 high-coloured. Rectum not much amiss, but the caecum 

 and colon tell another tale. Purple-looking, black, and 

 dirty-coloured inside, thickened and sw^ollen to J inch 

 or I inch in thickness, wdth contents partly solid and 

 partly fluid and purple-coloured, we find in them the true 

 seat of this haemorrhagic inflammation. 



' Take a piece of healthy large intestine, examine it 

 carefully, and you find it is about i inch thick, the 

 muscular and peritoneal coats are firmly attached and 

 adherent to each other, while the internal mucous is 

 loosely attached by cellular tissue to the muscular, with 

 a considerable amount of fat interposed, forming a sort 

 of cushion or bed, in which the lacteals and blood- 

 vessels may lie and ramify. All the three coats are pale 

 and destitute of high colouring. 



' Take an inflamed piece of large intestine, dissect it 

 carefully. You find ^ or h inch, or even i inch in 



