730 DISEASES AXD ABXORMALITIES OF THE YOUXG AXIMAL. 



Under the most favourable circumstances it causes loss of condition, 

 and often retards growth. 



Treatment. 



Preventive treatment is to be based on the predisposing or exciting 

 •causes just enumerated. Over-repletion with milk should be guarded 

 against, and if the animal is being reared artificially, great care must 

 be paid to the diet. If at the teat, the food and water of the mother 

 should be attended to ; and if the milk is too rich, this may be remedied 

 by giving less stimulating food. With Mares which are worked during 

 the suckling period, the milk is often retained for a long time in the udder, 

 and becomes altered ; on returning to the Foal, this is ravenously hungry, 

 and over-gorges itself with the unhealthy fluid. The preventive measures 

 are obvious in such a case. 



Indigestion may be due to an insufficiency of oily matters in the milk 

 ■of the mother ; here the diet of the latter must be altered. 



The curative measures in mild cases are simple. Some French and 

 Italian veterinarians recommend the administration of barley-water or 

 very weak beef-tea, and if there is not speedy amendment they prescribe 

 a spoonful of rennet, which, they assert, readily effects a cure. 



When the indigestion is due to acidity, alkaline agents — as carbonate 

 of potass or soda, lime-water, calcined magnesia, etc. — and afterwards 

 castor-oil — are generally effective. A mild purgative — such as castor- 

 oil, manna, cream of tartar, olive-oil, or a dose of glycerine in albumin- 

 ised water — is very useful, even when diarrhoea has set in. Manna has 

 proved an excellent remedy for Lambs, and even Calves. When con- 

 stipation is present, enemata of soap and water may prove serviceable. 

 Vegetable bitters — as tincture of gentian — and mild stimulants, are 

 often beneficial; much success has attended the administration of a 

 spoonful of very finely-powdered vegetable charcoal, given twice a day 

 mixed with water in which an egg has been beaten up. 



When there is pain and uneasiness, chlorodyne will be found an 

 excellent medicine, particularly if diarrhoea has persisted for some time. 

 Of course, a change of regimen is generally necessary. In chronic indi- 

 gestion of Calves, Philippi omits all medical treatment, which he asserts 

 is usually found to be inefficacious in these cases, and puts them to be 

 suckled by Cows which have newly calved, dieting them carefully at the 

 same time. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

 Gastro-intestinal Catarrh. 



According to Friedberger and Frohner,^ by its etiology and course, as 

 well as in the treatment to be adopted, the gastro-intestinal catarrh of 

 young animals differs essentially from the same affection in adults. It 

 has been confounded with the dysentery of young animals, and in the 

 first edition of this work, this error was committed ; indeed, for more 

 than a century the two diseases have been, and are even now, described 

 as one. But a distinction must be made, and they are separately dealt 

 with here. 



^ Lehrhuch der Specidlen Pathologie unci Theraple der Hausthiere, vol. i., p. 199, 

 Stuttgart, 1887. 



