248 THE COMMON COLICS OF THE HORSE 



Confronted with a case of acute agonizing pain, the 

 young graduate becomes alarmed. Enteritis, with all 

 the tales of dread fatality its name calls up, flits across 

 his mind. His case is — he is certain it is — enteritis. He 

 commences at once the administration of sedatives. 

 What is the result ? Everyone knows that a case of 

 subacute intestinal obstruction may commence with 

 extremely acute symptoms, and then linger on with dull 

 pains for days. What in reality was the sharp paroxysm 

 denoting a belated attempt of the bowel to deal with 

 a mass of obstructive matter has been treated with an 

 anodyne, the bowel being thus deadened to the serious 

 nature of its condition, and the gravity of the case of 

 obstruction rendered a certainty. 



Were it a proved fact that the administration of seda- 

 tives would bring about resolution in a case of this so- 

 called enteritis I could find some excuse for this error. 

 If one case only, and that an unquestionable one, were 

 on record of a cure being so brought about, I would again 

 risk falling into that error myself. But it is not so. 

 There is not, and never has been, an instance in which 

 sedatives have had a beneficial action and changed the 

 issue in an undoubted case of enteritis. If only that 

 teaching were generally accepted, acute pain would not 

 then frighten the practitioners into the too early adminis- 

 tration of anodynes, and one great factor leading to their 

 abuse in the treatment of colic would be entirely done 

 away with. 



Cases of Colic in which Sedatives are Harmful. 

 — Among the abuses of sedatives there is, to my mind, 

 nothing worse than the case of their administration in 

 subacute obstructions of the colon. These are the cases 

 that form so large a percentage — probably 80 or go — 

 of our total attacks of colic, so that if in his treatment he 



