60 INFLAMMATION OF THE BOWELS. 



death, choked up with dry food, hardened between the leaves of 

 which that stomach is composed. It will be necessary to wash this 

 well out before the proper path to the fourth stomach can be opened. 

 In order to effect this, plenty of thin gruel, or water with the chill 

 taken off, should be given ; or, if the beast will not drink it, several 

 quarts of it should be horned down. Clysters of warm water, or thin 

 gruel, v.ith a purging powder dissolved in them, should likewise be 

 administered. 



After having bled the animal once copiously, and, if the fever has 

 not subsided, a second, or even a third time, the farmer should in 

 this disease of hiffh inflammation of the bowels, and strangly obsti- 

 nate costiveness, found his only hope of saving the animal in pro- 

 ducing purging, and to this purpose his whole attention should be 

 directed. 



If it should not be accomplished after the third dose of the medi- 

 cine, a pound of common salt may be given. The water or other 

 liquid which the beast will probably be induced to drink will assist 

 in purging him. Should not this succeed, a pound and a half of 

 castor-oil must be administered. 



The patience of the attendants will sometimes be almost worn out 

 — they must, however, persist. Clysters, numerous, and great in 

 quantity, must be administered. The Epsom salts and the castor-oil 

 will not do harm in whatever quantities they are given : it will not 

 be prudent, however, to repeat the common salt. During the whole 

 of this time the cordial drink of the cow-leech must be avoided as a 

 dose of poison. 



The farmer or the attendant must not be deceived by the passage 

 of a little liquid dung in a small stream, for that shows that therels 

 yet much hardened fseces clinging round the intestines, and which 

 must be removed, and therefore he must pursue the measures recom- 

 mended until the dung is expelled in considerable quantities, and in 

 a large full stream, and without much straininof. There has gene- 

 rally been something more than usually wrong in the food or manage- 

 ment when tliis sad constipation is observed. Either the animal has 

 been kept too much and too long on dry food; or he has been turned 

 into fresh pasture (and particularly in the autumn) in which there are 

 oak-trees or some astringent vegetables. The cause must be removed, 

 or the disease will return. 



The state of the bowels of a beast that has once been sapped should 

 be observed for some time afterwards, and gentle a])erients occasion- 

 ally administered ; cold water should not, for a little while, be per- 

 mitted, and strict attention should be paid to the diet. 



Inflammation of the bowels, however, will in a few cases occur 

 without all this costiveness, and yet produced by nearly the same 

 causes. The other symptoms are the same, but the danger is not so 

 gieat. The beast should be bled and physicked, kept moderately 

 warm, and have warm water with bran mashes. 



