Diseases oj the Digestive Organs. 245 



througli the walls of the abdomen and escaping. Blunt 

 objects remain in the paunch and honeycomb-bag, causing 

 much or little irritation according to size or number. The 

 most varied objects are often found in cattle slaugh- 

 tered for beef and in good health, nails, coin, shot, solder, 

 buttons, and hair-balls, are among the most common. I 

 have known fifteen hair-balls from three to six inches in 

 diameter in the paunch of a healthy fat heifer. In sucking 

 calves, in which they form in the true stomach, they cause 

 dyspepsia, diarrhoea, and emaciation. 



Sheep suffer from wool-baUs, from the fine hairs of clover 

 and other ahments, and from collections of sand and gravel 

 when fed turnips from damp soU. 



Switie have balls of bristles in the stomach and large 

 intestines. 



Horses have concretions of phosphate of lime, with 

 smooth stony surface ; of ammonia-magnesian phosphate 

 with rough crystalline structure ; of the fine hairs from 

 the surface of the oat with a fine velvety surface ; and of 

 two or more of those mixed in one calculus. These are 

 formed equally in the stomach and large intestines. 



Dogs have hair-balls mainly in the large intestines, as 

 well as marbles and other objects picked up in play. 



These foreign bodies may exist without any manifest 

 result, or they may cause tympany in cattle and sheep 

 after every meal, vomiting in dogs and pigs, acute indiges- 

 tion in the horse, and in all animals in which they are 

 lodged in the intestines, obstruction of their passage, and 

 violent cohcs which recur frequently, and usually cut the 

 animal off sooner or later. 



In ruminants the offending bodies may be removed from 

 the stomach by a surgical operation, but in others little 

 can be done beyond giving anodynes (opium, belladonna, 

 stramonium, etc.,) to relieve paki and spasm and await 

 the result. A dose of physic would carry off the smaller 

 calculi but would be dangerous in the large. But these 

 cases can rarely be recognized until after death, and are 



