226 STABLE ECONOMY. 



kind of horse, but those who have the bowels and stomach 

 habitually loaded are always in greatest danger. Horses tha 

 get little grain must eat a large quantity of roots or of fodder 

 as much as the digestive apparatus can control. The stomach 

 and bowels can not act upon any more, and that which they 

 can not act upon runs speedily into fermentation. 



This seems to me the principal reason why slow-work 

 horses are so much more liable to the disease than fast- 

 workers. When the pace reaches seven or eight miles an 

 hour, the belly will not carry a great bulk of food, and so 

 much grain is given that the horse has no inclination to load 

 his bowels with fodder. There is never, or very rarely, mon 

 food than the stomach, the bowels, and the juices of these, 

 can act upon. 



Symptoms of Colic. — The horse is taken suddenly ill. If 

 at work, he slackens his pace, attempts to stop, and when he 

 stops, he prepares to lie down ; sometimes he goes down as 

 if shot, the moment he stands or is allowed to stand ; at slow 

 work he sometimes quickens his pace and is unwilling to 

 stand. In the stable he begins to paw the ground with his 

 fore feet, lies down, rolls, sometimes quite over, lies on his 

 back ; when the distension is not great he lies tolerably qui- 

 et, and for several minutes. But when the distension and 

 pain are greater, he neither stands nor lies a minute ; he is 

 no sooner down than he is up. He generally starts all at 

 once, and throws himself down again with great violence. 

 He strikes the belly with his hind feet, and in moments of 

 comparative ease he looks wistfully at his flanks. When 

 standing he makes many and fruitless attempts to urinate ; 

 and the keeper always declares there is " something wrong 

 with the water." In a little while the belly swells all round, 

 or it swells most on the right flank. The worst, the most 

 painful cases, are those in which the swelling is general ; 

 sometimes it is very inconsiderable, the air being in small 

 quantity, or not finding its way into the bowels. As the dis- 

 ease proceeds, the pain becomes more and more intense. 

 The horse dashes himself about with terrible violence. Ev- 

 ery fall threatens to be his last. The perspiration runs off 

 him in streams. His countenance betrays extreme agony, 

 his contortions are frightfully violent, and seldom even for an 

 instant suspended. 



After continuing in this state for a brief period, other symp- 

 toms appear, indicating rupture or inflammation, or the ap- 

 proach of death without either. These, and the treatment 



