834 STABLE MANUAL AND HORSE DOCTOR 



The Symptoms of indigestion are : The horse does not 

 thrive as other horses in the same stable, nor is he capable 

 of the same work ; though his appetite, so far from being 

 impaired, may be even voracious. Often it is fastidious — 

 good at one time, indifferent at another. Sometimes it is 

 depraved. He will gnaw and even eat almost anything 

 within his reach — dirt or stones, a brick wall, and particu- 

 larly the plaster or mortar from it, his crib or rack, etc. 

 His coat has an unhealthy aspect ; it is what is called 

 " pen-feathered " and arid, and perhaps scurfy ; nor is it 

 shed at the usual season. He is hide-bound. His dung 

 has not the appearance it ought to have ; it is either darker 

 or lighter than is natural, has an offensive odour, and when 

 broken crumbles to pieces, and appears to consist of lumps 

 of loosely-compacted chopped hay, mingled with many 

 entire or imperfectly changed oats. In the stable the 

 horse is mostly inclined to be costive, but when taken to 

 exercise is soon excited to purge. 



The Ordinary Seat of Indigestion would appear to be 

 within the villous membrane of the stomach, or else that 

 which lines the intestinal canal ; both these membranes 

 furnishing secretions indispensably necessary for the due 

 conversion of the food into alimentary and feculent matters. 

 Independently, however, of any derangement in these mem- 

 branes, various other causes might be mentioned, sufficient 

 of themselves to account for the incomplete performance of 

 the digestive process. Mastication may not have been duly 

 performed ; the salivary secretion may be bad or defective; 

 the liver may not have done its duty ; the bile may be 

 faulty in quality or quantity, or the pancreatic juice ; or 

 there may exist some derangement in the peristaltic action, 

 and consequent irregularity in the progress of the alimen- 

 tary matters. Other causes may exist, although irritation, 

 or inflammation, or disorder in some form or other of the 

 membranous lining of the stomach and bowels appears to 

 be the ordinary one, and that to which our observations in 

 this place are confined. 



Treatment. — The ordinary mode of dealing with these 

 cases is to administer two or three doses of physic, at 

 intervals of a week or so. A preferable procedure to this 

 is the old one of dividing the ball into two doses, and 

 giving them at intervals of three or four days; the 

 bowels being, in many of these cases, in such a state of 



