224 STABLE ECONOMY. 



strangulation. The disease sometimes cures itself, the air 

 not being very abundant, or being evacuated by passing 

 through the bowels ; but very often the horse dies in from 

 four to twelve hours. Sometimes he dies in two, and some- 

 times not till he has been ill for eighteen or twenty-four. The 

 disease goes under various names. In different places it is 

 termed gripes, the batts, fret, colic, flatulent colic, spasmodic 

 colic, enteritis, inflamed bowels, and acute indigestion. It 

 has been described by only one author with whom I am ac- 

 quainted, and he speaks of it as a rare disease. All who have 

 written treatises on veterinary medicine, have seen the disease 

 several times, but they mistake it for some other to which 

 they have given names, according to the appearances they 

 have seen on dissecting the horse after death. Thus, one 

 describes the symptoms, and attributes them to inflammation 

 of the bowels ; another to spasms of the bowels ; a third to 

 strangulation ; a fourth to rupture of the diaphragm, and soon, 

 with far too many more. All these, and several others, are 

 the effect of fermentation of the food either in the stomach or 

 in the bowels. The cause has been overlooked, and death 

 traced only to the effects of the cause. The disease which 

 is treated and described by authors and teachers as inflamed 

 bowels, spasmodic colic, strangulation, ruptured stomach, 

 ruptured diaphragm, is in 136 out of 137 cases, neither more 

 nor less at the beginning than a distension of the stomach 

 and bowels by air. I know this from my own practice, of 

 which, in reference to this disease, I have kept a record dur- 

 ing 18 months. For the sake of brevity in reference, I shall 

 term it 



Colic — I go a little out of my limits to speak of this dis- 

 ease. I do so for four reasons. In the first place, the dis- 

 ease is deadly ; it destroys more heavy draught-horses than 

 all others put together. In the second place, 1 can show how 

 it may be cured with infallible certainty, if it be taken in 

 time. In the third place, the disease requires immediate re- 

 lief ; the horse may be dead, or past cure, before the medical 

 assistant can be obtained. And in the fourth place, the na- 

 ture of the disease and its treatment, are not known, or they 

 are too little known by the veterinarian. These circumstan- 

 ces induce me to digress a little from the proper object of this 

 work ; and I think they are of sufficient importance to render 

 apology unnecessary. I will, however, be brief. In another 

 Jlace I will enter into details which would be improper in this. 



The Causes of Colic are rather ^numerous. I have already 



