DISEASES OF THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 149 



and the countenance very haggard and dejected. In the 

 advanced stages the animal is usually sunk in stupor, and rests 

 his head on the manger or pushes it against the wall, while in 

 some instances nervous movements of the lips and limbs occur. 

 Treatme?it. — Give early, full doses of aromatics, stimulants, 

 and tonics (tincture of pimento or ginger, oil of peppermint, 

 aqua ammonia, ether, alcohol, peppers, nux vomica, etc.), lub 

 the belly, and if relieved, follow up with a dose of physic. 

 Alkalies are sometimes useful, as in the ox. Warm water 

 injections and walking exercise should also be given. The 

 stomach of the horse cannot be safely punctured, hence the 

 affection is too often fatal. When relieved give easily digested 

 food frequently in small quantity, until the stomach has regained 

 its tone. When horses bolt their food give a little hay to 

 appease hunger before allowing grain. 



ACUTE INTESTINAL INDIGESTION IN THE HORSE. 

 TYMPANITIC COLIC. 



Due to the same causes as gastric tympany, this often com- 

 plicates that, and is complicated by it, the disease being named 

 according to the predominance of the gaseous evolution in 

 stomach or bowels. When the bowels are mainly implicated, 

 there is greater hope, as medicines may be passed through the 

 stomach and taken up from the gut so as to affect the system, 

 and the gas may even be drawn off with a small cannula and 

 trocar from the large intestines which occupy the lower part of 

 the abdomen. The puncture should be made where the 

 resonance is clearest and most drum -like. The symptoms 

 closely resemble those of tympanitic stomach, only there is 

 more passage of dung and flatus, and the treatment only differs 

 in the greater freedom with which liquids may be poured into 

 the stomach and the possibility of drawing off the gas through 

 a cannula. 



