COLIC. 267 



this principle in its fullest extent, aloes and enemata are the 

 agents to be employed. Firstly, with reference to aloes; five 

 drachms, as an average dose, should be administered in 

 the early stage of an attack, and but two or three hours 

 elapse, as a rule, before symptoms of decided relief are mani- 

 fested. It is an error to suppose that because from 12 to 

 20 hours are required to purge a horse, therefore it is not 

 until after that time that relief can be apparent. The length 

 and very huge size of the horse's intestine oppose speedy eva- 

 cuation, but the mucus membrane pours out a large quantity 

 of fluid, which softens the impacted faeces, lubricates the de- 

 licate membrane of the gut, and thereby allays irritation and 

 pain; and these effects are manifest a comparatively short 

 time after the purgative has been administered. Many who 

 have adopted this principle of treatment have objected to 

 aloes, because said to be irritating, and preferred oil. But 

 oleaginous purgatives are, in horses, of most uncertain opera- 

 tion; added to which, the objection urged against aloes is much 

 too theoretical; experience is opposed to it, and I believe it 

 would be impossible to support the objection with any well-au- 

 thenticated statistical data. It is not unimportant to observe, 

 that even surgeons and physicians of eminence have objected to 

 purgatives in the treatment of spasmodic affections of the in- 

 testines, on the supposed ground of their irritating proper- 

 ties; but the experience of the majority has prescribed, and 

 it is now all but unanimously admitted, that, under the cir- 

 cumstances mentioned, purgatives are depletives and seda- 

 tives, by virtue of their power to produce copious fluid 

 evacuations, and remove sources of irritation. 



The second class of remedies above referred to (enemata) 

 should be employed from the very commencement. For this 

 purpose the ordinary pewter syringe is frequently at hand 

 bjectionable, however, on account of its weight and bulk, 



