DISEASES OF THE MANYPLUS, OR MANIFOLDS. 318 



symptoms were so different in diflferent cases, and always so obscure, 

 that no legitimate conclusion could be drawn from the appearances 

 that presented themselves. 



DISEASES OF THE MANYPLUS, OR MANIFOLDS. 



Although the function of this stomacK is one of a purely mechani- 

 cal nature, there seems to be a strong bond of sympathy between it 

 and almost every part of the frame. There are few serious diseases 

 by which cattle are afflicted, and none of an acute and inflammatory 

 nature, in which the manyplus is not involved. It is so common in 

 cases of catarrh, constipation, inflammation of the lungs or bowels, 

 simple fever, dropping after calving, blain, and even murrain, to find 

 the manyplus either choked with food in a hardened state, or, if con- 

 tinuing soft, yet having become exceedingly putrid and emitting a 

 most nauseous smell, that the idea of the animal being fardel-hound^ 

 or having disease of the faik, is always present in the mind of the 

 farmer and the country practitioner. They are seldom wrong in this 

 surmise, for the fardel-bag either sympathizes with the diseases of 

 other paits, or is the original seat and focus of disease. 



The manyplus has been described as containing numerous leaves, 

 curtains, or duplicatures of its cuticular coat, and with interposed 

 layers of muscular and vascular tissue, which hang from its roof and 

 float loose in its cavity. These leaves are covered with innumerable 

 little hard papillae or prominences ; and many of these, and especially 

 toward the lower edges, assume a greater degree of bulk, and some- 

 thinfif of a hook-like form. Those portions of food that are returned 

 after the second mastication, that have not been tlioroughly ground 

 down, are seized by these hooked edges of the leaves and drawn up be- 

 tween them, and there retained until, by the action of these flexible grind- 

 stones, they are sufficiently comminuted for the purpose of digestion. 



It is easy to imagine that, either sharing in the irritability of other 

 parts, or being the original seat of irritation and inflammation, the 

 manyplus may spasmodically contract upon and forcibly detain the 

 substances that have been thus taken up between its leaves. By this 

 contraction the natural moisture of the food, or that which it had 

 acquired in the processes of maceration and mastication, is mechanically 

 squeezed out, or drained away by the very position of the leaves, and 

 a hard and dry mass necessarily remains. When the contraction is 

 violent, and this imprisonment of the food long continued, we can 

 even conceive of the possibility of its becoming so hardened and dry 

 as to be snapped between the fingers, and to be capable of being 

 reduced to powder. The description of it is not exaggerated when 

 it is said to " look as if it had been baked in an oven." On the other 

 hand, it can as readily be imagined that, either debilitated by inflam- 

 matory action peculiar to itself, or sympathizing with and sharing in 

 the debility of other parts, the leaves may have lost the power of 

 14 



