172 ACUTE DYSENTERY. 
Calomel . . . . . .... 6.) «Halfa drachm. 
Oplum «2 4 2 2s £4 4.0) # se ¥ = 4 -Onedrachm. 
But stop all the other medicine as soon as the subsidence of the symp- 
toms will permit. The food is now of all importance: bran, in enteritis, 
is positive poison; mashes are not to be thought of; linseed is too feed- 
ing for an inflammatory subject. The same objection may be taken to 
gruel; hay tea, or pails of boiling water poured upon a pound of flour, 
must sustain the body for the first day after recovery ; on the next day, 
a feed of boiled roots may be introduced, but not the whole quantity 
at once; that must be divided into three meals. Then the amount may 
be doubled, and thus the full bulk of provender be by degrees attained ; 
afterward a few crushed and scalded oats may be mixed with the rest at 
each meal; but it should be some time before hay is permitted to irritate 
and distend the lately inflamed surfaces. 
Enteritis is a fearful disorder; he who has witnessed one death by that 
terrible malady should have received an awful rebuke. The post-mor- 
tem examination best describes the violence of the affection. The in- 
testines, generally the large intestines, are black and swollen; often in 
color they approach to a green. Their structure is destroyed; they tear 
upon a touch, and are so loaded with inflamed blood that one division 
of the bowels may form no inconsiderable burden for a strong man. 
The above directions, the intelligent reader will fully comprehend, are 
not pronounced in any absolute sense. No two cases of any violent dis- 
order are precisely similar; the forms, therefore, prescribed in these 
pages admit of variations. They are given only as suited to the gener- 
ality of attacks; they may be lessened or augmented, as circumstances 
demand or as discretion dictates. It would be as easy to make a shoe 
which should fit all feet, as to name medicines or point out the quanti- 
ties which should be adapted to all maladies. 
ACUTE DYSENTERY. 
Diarrhea may be banished from the list of diseases to which horse- 
flesh is liable. Certain animals will purge during work; others will 
scour upon the smallest change of diet; such peculiarities, however, 
mostly check themselves; they demand very slight or no remedial treat- 
ment. Unlike diarrhea in the human subject, they never terminate in 
death; but dysentery is as violent as diarrhcea is mild. The length and 
size of the intestines render any disease within them a very serious 
affair. There are two kinds of dysentery, the acute and the chronic; 
the acute form of disease will constitute the subject of the present 
article. 
