402 MATERIA MEDICA 



gnrgings. When new or musty oats are the cause of the disease, 

 and better cannot be had, they should be dried on a malt kiln : 

 or some barley that has been boiled or steeped for twenty or thirty 

 hours in water may be given. The farinaceous or saccharine 

 roots, such as potatoes, parsnips, mangel-wurzel, or carrots, may 

 be found useful, especially if cooked by steam. Though an im- 

 provement in diet is the remedy to be mainly relied upon for 

 restoring the stomach to health, there are other circumstances 

 to be attended to, which may hasten or assist in the cure. Pure 

 air, regular exercise, assiduity and kindness in the groom, and 

 the society of other horses, will greatly exhilarate the animal's 

 spirits, and thereby improve the digestive function. When the 

 season is favourable, a run at grass in short sweet pasture is 

 perhaps the most effectual remedy of all. 



Though animals are led by instinct to eat dirt and drink 

 muddy water, in order to allay the irritation caused by an acid in 

 the stomach, much mischief has sometimes arisen from allowing 

 horses to indulge such an appetite. jNlr. Feron states, that many 

 fatal attacks of colic have been produced by horses eating earth 

 or sand when at camp, as it accumulates and forms large balls 

 in the bowels ; that he has opened horses that died from this 

 cause, and found nearly two buckets of sand in the crecum and 

 colon (the large bowels). Hard stones of considerable size arc 

 sometimes found in horses' bowels, most commonly in millers' 

 horses. I have seen one that weighed eight pounds, and I think 

 there is one in the Museum of the Veterinary College, that 

 weighs ten pounds. Cattle that are tied up during the winter 

 often acquire a propensity to lick up earth ; they also, as their 

 coats become loose on the approach of spring, are frequently 

 licking themselves, and often swallow a great deal of hair, which 

 is formed into balls in the stomach, and sometimes occasions 

 serious disorders. I have known a great number of these balls 

 discharged by the droves of cattle that pass through Oak-hill, 

 towards Binegar Fair, in Witsun week ; some of them as large 

 as a man's fist. Calves, when fattening, are often fed so injudi- 

 ciously as to bring on serious disorders of the stomach. This 

 organ in the calf, and probably in all animals, has the property 

 of coagulating milk ; but when it is disordered by being over- 

 loaded with milk, or by drinking stale milk, or milk from a cow 

 that has a bad udder, an acid appears to be formed in the 

 stomach, which sometimes coagulates the milk suddenly, and 

 forms it into hard indigestible curds, similar to cheese : I have 

 known calves and lambs die from this cause. It is a common 

 practice with farmers, to give young lambs chalk, mixed with 

 barley or oatmeal, when fattening them. This certainly does 

 some good, by correcting the acidity of the stomach ; but still 

 they are often affected with cither diarrhoea, or costivcness, and 



