DISEASES OF THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 153 



Cattle suffer much from sharp-pointed bodies like needles, 

 pins, nails, etc., taken with the food, and afterward making 

 their way to the heart, which they penetrate, causing sudden 

 death, or in more favourable cases making their way through 

 the walls of the abdomen and escaping. Blunt objects remain 

 in the paunch and honeycomb-bag, causing much or little irri- 

 tation according to size or number. The most varied objects 

 are often found in cattle slaughtered for beef and in good 

 health — nails, coin, shot, solder, buttons, and hair-balls are 

 among the most common. I have known fifteen hair-balls 

 from three to six inches in diameter in the paunch of a healthy 

 fat heifer. In sucking calves, in which they form in the true 

 stomach, they cause dyspepsia, diarrhoea, and emaciation. 



Sheep suffer from wool-balls, from the fine hairs of clover, 

 and other aliments, and from collections of sand and gravel 

 when fed turnips from damp soil. 



Swine have balls of bristles in the stomach and large intes- 

 tines. 



Horses have concretions of phosphate of lime with smooth 

 stony surface ; of ammonia-magnesian phosphate with rough 

 crystalline structure ; of the fine hairs from the surface of the 

 oat with a fine velvety surface ; and of two or more of those 

 mixed in one calculus. These are formed equally in the 

 stomach and large intestines. 



Dogs have hair-balls mainly in the large intestines, as well as 

 marbles and other objects picked up in play. 



These foreign bodies may exist without any manifest result, 

 or they may cause tympany in cattle and sheep after every 

 meal, vomiting in dogs and pigs, acute indigestion in the horse, 

 and in all animals in which they are lodged in the intestines, 

 obstruction of their passage, and violent colics which recur 

 frequently, and usually cut the animal off sooner or later. 



In ruminants the offending bodies may be removed from the 

 stomach by a surgical operation, but in others little can be 



