DYSPEPSIA. 219 



by learning how animals are fed. When, from repeated dis- 

 tension, a chronic state of dilatation is established, there is a 

 tendency to the impactions already referred to, which paralyse 

 the stomach. Any hollow organ may be rendered incapable 

 of contracting on its contents by over-repletion. Dr Brinton 

 says : " Just as the sudden application of a heavy weight to 

 the end of a voluntary muscle not only elongates its fibres, 

 but utterly exhausts them of all contractile power; or, just 

 as the enormous distension of an occluded intestine soon ex- 

 hausts and annihilates the writhing contractions by which 

 its muscular coat at first strives to propel its contents past 

 the obstacle, so it seems probable that a rapid dilatation of 

 the stomach may destroy the operancy of its muscular fibres, 

 not only putting them ' hors de combat ' by stretching, but 

 suspending those nutritive changes which are necessary to 

 their contractility, and are expressed by their contraction. 

 How far each of these effects is ' physical ' or ' vital,' it is 

 of little use to inquire, for the antithesis is too clumsy to 

 frame a dilemma, and too inaccurate even to probe the facts 

 which it would obviously be unable to refute." 



Treatment, therefore, consists in a well-regulated diet, 

 which, so far as the domestic animals are concerned, will 

 always prevent abnormal deviations in the size of the stomach. 



DYSPEPSIA. 



This term has not found its way into veterinary works. 

 It is one I have employed to indicate an impaired digestion 

 from arrest or diminution in secretion, or, in other words, "a 

 difficult character of digestion unexplained by structural 

 lesion." The stomach may not be the only organ affected, 

 and it is probable that there are instances in which liver, 

 pancreas, or intestinal glands are primarily at fault, but "why 

 the symptoms of dyspepsia refer chiefly to the stomach it is 



