140 Veterinary Medicine. 



septic ptomaines and toxins, often determines indigestion and irri- 

 tation of the mucosa. These poisons may further be absorbed 

 and produce general constitutional disorder which reacts most 

 injuriously on the stomach and digestion. 



Milk swallowed rapidly and in excess by a hungry calf or foal, 

 over-distends the stomach, which, like other hollow viscera in 

 such conditions, is rendered paretic or paralytic, and suffers from 

 suspension of both the vermicular contractions and the peptic 

 secretions. Under these conditions the milk, which is one of the 

 most admirable culture media for bacterial ferments, undergoes 

 rapid decomposition, with the production of a series of toxins 

 and ptomaines varying according to the different kinds of microbes 

 that may be present. Under such conditions microbes which are 

 normally harmless, vigorously and destructively attack the 

 mucous membrane and determine some of the worst types of 

 juvenile diarrhoea. In mild cases reducing the milk to one-half 

 is one of the best measures. 



In artificial feeding there is another serious danger. Calves in 

 particular are brought up largely on gruels made from farinaceous 

 material. These contain a large quantity of starch which re- 

 quires the action of the saliva (ptyaline) to resolve it into glu- 

 cose, and fit it for absorption. But in the early days of life the 

 salivary glands are almost entirely inactive, and it is only as the 

 first three stomachs develop that this secretion becomes normally 

 abundant. This is sought to be met by fixing in the feeding 

 bucket a rubber teat, which the young animal is made to suck so 

 as to solicit the secretion of saliva. The benefit obtained is how- 

 ever more from the slower ingestion of the milk than from any 

 material increase of saliva from the as yet functionally inactive 

 glands. 



The presence of hair balls in the stomach, derived from the 

 skin of themselves or others is one of the most injurious of the 

 causes of juvenile indigestion. Lying as these do at this early 

 age in the one well developed stomach they interfere with its 

 normal secretions, and being at first open in texture they become 

 saturated with putrefying ingesta, which gives out the most 

 poisonous products. 



The milk is materially affected by the food eaten by the nurs- 

 ing animal and such variations in the milk tend at times to de- 



