164 Veterinary Medicine. 



tants have gained the intestines, and finally a course of iron or 

 bitters. Careful dieting is absolutely essential. 



ACUTE CATARRHAL GASTRITIS IN THE HORSE. 



Causes : wet fermented food, cryptogams, bacteria, sprouted green pota- 

 toes, sand, irritants, hot food, frosted food, ill health, starvation, anaemia, 

 siliceous plants, diseased teeth or salivary apparatus, parasites, calculi, 

 specific inflammations. Symptoms : depraved appetite, licking soils, walls, 

 filth, etc., clammy mouth, red bordered tongue, eructations, colic, rumbling, 

 tympany, icterus, costive, coated faeces, tender hypochondrium, anorexia, 

 emaciation. I,esions : stomach full or nearly empty, pyloric sac congested, 

 mucosa thickened, petechiated, with excess of mucus and desquamated 

 epithelium, cells swollen opaque, congested duodenum, pale yellow liver, 

 with excess of pigment in cells, also in urine, ruptured stomach, hemor- 

 rhagic infiltrations. Treatment : careful dieting, laxative, stomachics, 

 pepsin, antiferments, bitters, ipecacuan. 



Causes. This is a much less common affection in horses than 

 dogs and is usually charged on some fault in diet. Fodders that 

 have been badly harvested or wet from any other cause and are 

 musty, dusty, rusty, or covered with any irritant or poisonous 

 cryptogams or bacterial ferment, sprouted oats, or potatoes that 

 have become green by exposure to the sun, sand and gravel in the 

 grain, irritant plants like ranunculus, euphorbium, veratrum, etc. ; 

 cooked food given too hot, or vegetable food given frosted ; putrid 

 water, and indeed all the causes of indigestion tend to produce 

 gastric catarrh. Weakness of the stomach and gastric functions 

 from any cause is a concurrent factor. Thus extensive inflamma- 

 tions and violent fevers, prolonged abstinence, starvation, anaemic 

 and parasitic affections, the action of frozen food on the viscus, 

 are to be feared. A horse which has been for a week or more 

 without food is extremely subject to such attacks unless fed with 

 the greatest caution at first. Irritant plants like carex, equise- 

 tum, etc. , which act mechanically by reason of the contained 

 silica, food imperfectly masticated on account of disease of the 

 jaws, teeth or salivary glands, parasites like spiroptera and bots 

 and phosphatic and oat-hair calculi, act mechanically. Finally 

 certain affections like petechial fever, influenza, pneumonia, 



