156 Veterinary Medicine. 



stomach caused by it, rather than from lack of trituration and 

 saliva. If fed judiciously, cooked food is more fattening for 

 both horse and ox, any lack of ptyaline being counterbalanced 

 by the presence of amylopsin in the intestines. 



Such paresis and indigestion, however, are more common as 

 the result of a general debility or a special gastric atony caused by 

 disease, starvation, overwork or fatigue. In all acute febrile and 

 inflammatory diseases the gastric functions are weak or sus- 

 pended, and if the animal is tempted to eat, the ingesta is un- 

 affected by the digestive fluids and forms a suitable fluid for 

 injurious fermentations. In convalescence especially, when the 

 starved system once more craves support, tempting food is liable 

 to be taken to excess, unless the attendant is especially judicious 

 and careful in grading the feed as the stomach can dispose of it. 

 The horse that has been starved must be fed little and often, of 

 easily digested material until the gastric functions are restored. 

 Long continued severe work, exhausts the motor and secretory 

 power of the stomach, as it debilitates the system at large, and 

 the animal may be at first unable to digest a feed of grain even 

 if he will take it. In such a case as in that of the very hungry 

 glutton a drink of gruel or a handful of hay which he must 

 masticate will often obviate the danger. 



Violent exertion immediately after a meal arrests digestion, 

 and tends to a fatal indigestion. An animal fed grain and im- 

 mediately put to severe work, or subjected to confinement for a 

 painful operation, may die in two hours from tympanitic indiges- 

 tion. 



This weakness of the digestion may come from profuse bleed- 

 ing, from the anaemia caused by parasites (sclerostomata), or 

 from injuries to the pneumogastric nerves or their centres. It 

 can be produced experimentally by cutting both vagi ; the gastric 

 contents then remain packed and solid, without peptic juices and 

 without digestion. 



Iced water, like frozen food, may temporarily arrest the gastric 

 functions and entail fermentation. It acts most dangerously on 

 the overheated and exhausted horse, and though the indigestion 

 may not prove fatal, it may induce a sympathetic skin eruption 

 or laminitis. The mere exposure to external cold is less to be 

 dreaded as there is a compensating stimulus which drives the 

 blood to internal organs, the stomach included. Standing in cold 



