CHAPTER XIV. 



THE ANATOMY AND DISEASES OF THE INTESTINES. 



In cattle, the enormous development of the rumen, occupying 

 nearly three-fourths of the abdominal cavity, leaves but little room 

 for bulky intestines ; the bowels are therefore diminished in size, in 

 order that they may be mort rapidly packed wherever room can be 

 found for them. 



The larger intestines, particularly the colon and caecum, have 

 no collated structure, and, consequently, the food will pass through 

 them with great rapidity. Lest this, however, should prevent the 

 abstraction of all the nutriment which it contains, and thus interfere 

 with the destiny of cattle — the furnishing of the human being with 

 food while they are living and after they are dead — the intestinal 

 canal is greatly prolonged. The intestines of cattle are twenty-two 

 times as long as his body. 



It will be remarked {g, p. 291, and fig. 1, on next page,) that the 

 duodenum is, at its commencement from the stomach, little larger 

 than the jejunum and ileum, which are prolongations from it. In 

 consequence of the maceration of the food in the rumen, the double 

 mastication, and the mechanism of the manyplus, by means of which 

 every fibrous particle is seized and ground down, the food is nearly 

 dissolved before it enters the fourth stomach ; it is easily completed 

 there, and the duodenum has nothing to do of this nature. On this 

 account, the duodenum of cattle is little larger than the small intes- 

 tines which succeed to it. 



The duodenum and all the intestines have, like the stomachs, 

 three coats. The outer one is the peritoneum, or the membrane by 

 which all the contents of the belly are invested ; by which also they 

 are all confined in their natural situations, and by the smoothness 

 and moisture of which, all injurious friction and concussions are 

 avoided. The second is the muscular coat, supplied by the motor 

 organic nerves, and by means of the contraction of which the food is 

 propelled along the intestinal canal in the process of healthy diges- 

 tion, or hastened when those muscles are made to contract more 

 rapidly and violently under the influence o! irritation, whether refer- 



