90 KENNEL DISEASES. 
a mechanical effect, the bile being sucked up into the stomach by the act of 
vomiting. 
When purely functional, that is, when it occurs independently of disease, 
vomiting does not require any treatment. In cases in which no other symptoms 
are present and the cause cannot be made out, food should be for a time with- 
held or restricted to milk and lime-water. If then it does not cease and doubts 
still exist, it may be treated as advised in diarrhcea. 
ACUTE INDIGESTION. 
It need not be urged that the digestion of dogs in health is very powerful, 
and that the stomach and intestines are in a rare degree insensible to such im- 
positions as bones, small stones, bits of wood, etc., which in most other animals 
would be quite certain to excite irritation if not severe trouble. But all members 
of the canine race are not healthy, and as a matter of fact such are their conditions 
generally, — the feeding being often unwise, the kennelling faulty, and the amount 
of exercise insufficient, —they may be said to be at the present time quite far 
removed from nature, and in considerable degree lacking the high health of their 
ancestors. While this is true of dogs as a whole, it would be too much to affirm 
that all have declined greatly from the original standard. Indeed, it is by no 
means certain that domestication has not been charged with greater loss in this 
direction than rightfully belongs to it; and although there must have been some 
deterioration of course, there are still many dogs quite as healthy, strong and 
enduring as were their relatives in the wild state. 
Leaving speculation and fairly entering the subject at hand, the fact is 
encountered that the functions of digestion are quite frequently disturbed. In 
truth, there are but few diseases affecting the body generally which do not inter- 
fere with them. It is not, however, the purpose to treat here of derangements of 
digestion which are mere complications and occur through sympathy, as it were, 
of the stomach and associate organs with troubles in other organs or parts, but, 
instead, it is to deal with derangements which result from immediate or direct 
inflictions, as by feeding unwisely, etc. 
When digestion is greatly retarded or stopped altogether for a time, as it may 
be by a hard run, swim, or chill from sudden exposure to cold, an attack of acute 
indigestion is likely the result, but in most cases of that trouble the cause is over- 
feeding. Fortunately it is then chiefly limited to disturbance of the digestive or- 
gans, and does not materially affect the general system or health. Furthermore, 
unless of too frequent recurrence, it is usually of temporary duration merely. Dogs 
have the happy faculty of vomiting easily, and by that means they are generally 
able to relieve an over-loaded stomach. They lack discretion, however, and are 
