186 DISCRIMINATION NECESSARY. [BOOK II. 



Castor oil, in the quantity of a pint or more, 

 will open the canal partially only, passing by the 

 main evil in the coecum and great gat*, and pro- 

 ducing but a small quantity of the offensive cause 

 of disease. But help must be afforded in this re- 

 spect ; and if the bowels yield not to the purgative 

 ball, other means must be resorted to, though we 

 should never think of relying upon the oil, except 

 in the first instances. Although the constipation 

 or obstruction be obstinate, yet very strong drastic 

 purgatives are ineligible, as they might kill the 

 animal, or at least injure the intestines materially, 

 by reason of that very circumstance : prepare the 

 patient with plenty of oatmeal gruel. 



Distinctions have been drawn by some writers 

 between " symptomatic and simple fever ;" that 

 is to say, whether the excitement, called fever, 

 originates in a check of the system generally, or 

 whether the feverish symptoms have been produced 

 by some particular inflammation, either internal or 

 external ; but, as the treatment in both cases is so 

 nearly the same, we will make no such distinction. 

 The internal attacks alluded to, when confined to 

 a single organ, and not extending to the whole 

 frame, are more properly termed inflammation of 



* The practical reader, whilst waiting the progress of the disease, 

 will not waste his time by turning back to the first book, at pages 14, 

 and 123, and see what is said of the conformation of those large 

 guts, and the difficulty of escape that must attend their offensive 

 contents at the turns or sinuses (which we have there considered as 

 eo many valves), when inflammation or fever has once begun. 



