Diseases of the Digestive Organs. 255 



of oil of turpentine, copaiva, creosote or carboKc acid 

 often act beneficially on tlie diseased mucous membrane. 

 The same agents may be given as injections in mucilagi- 

 nous fluids. Diet must be bland, easily digested, and fed 

 little at a time. Mashes of wheat bran, or flour from the 

 whole grain of wheat, barley or oats, and fresh pulped or 

 cooked roots may be given to the herbivora ; and farinas 

 made into puddings, with just enough juice of meat to in- 

 sure their being eaten, to the carnivora. Fresh raw meat 

 without fat, beaten to a pulp in a mortar will often agree 

 when nothing else will. The drink should be mixed with 

 a little boiled linseed, gum, slippery elm or barley water. 



OBSTEUCTION OP THE BOWELS. 



Under this head may be considered all cases of com- 

 plete obstruction of the bowels excepting those of the na- 

 ture of hernia or rupture. It wiU include blockiag of the 

 gut by hardened dung, calculi, and foreign bodies swal- 

 lowed ; invagination or the slipping of a portion of gut 

 into what is adjacent, like the drawing of a finger of a 

 glove into itself ; volvulus, or the rolling on itself of a por- 

 tion of intestine with its connecting membrane until noth- 

 ing can pass through it ; strangulation of an intestine by 

 another rolled round it, by a tumor hanging by a long 

 pedicle, or by a band of false membrane formed in some 

 pre-existing inflammation and gradually contracting ; tu- 

 mors formed within a gut ; and in steers the strangulation 

 of a loop of intestine in a pouch in the right flank formed 

 by contraction on the spermatic cord in castration. 



The symptoms of complete obstruction are those of se- 

 vere spasmodic colic, but without the intervals of complete 

 freedom from pain. It differs also from enteritis in that 

 there is no rise of temperature at first. The dung may 

 be abundant at the outset but as the disease advances is 

 more or less completely suppressed, the portion of intes- 

 tine behind the obstruction having been emptied. The 

 horse often socms ^'o obtain a partial temporary relief bj 



