40 COLICS AND THEIR TREATMENT 



At 5 :30 p. m. he wanted to eat when the other horses 

 were fed, a small handful of hay was given him and he 

 ate it greedily. At 6 p. m. ninety grains of sulphocar- 

 bolates compound and one grain of strychnine was given 

 in a capsule. 



Nothing further was given this patient and there 

 was no passage from the bowels for forty-eight hours; 

 when a small quantity of feces was voided, very heavily 

 coated with coagulated albumen, in fact, entirely covered 

 with it. A nice recovery followed without complications. 



Resume.— I cite this case because of its train 

 of symptoms, first badly bloated, second, amount of solids 

 removed by the use of the tube, and, next, no action of 

 the bowels from beginning to end. Not a single passage 

 from them in forty-eight hours, nor any gas to speak of, 

 yet the bloating was relieved by persistently and repeat- 

 edly using the stomach tube, and a nice recovery fol- 

 lowed. 



While I had a very satisfactory recovery in this case 

 and in many others similar to it ; for the medicinal treat- 

 ment in such cases I have since quit using eserine and 

 arecoline. Instead I use pilocarpine in two-grain doses, 

 as the case seems to demand. There is no doubt that the 

 use of either physostigmine, or arecoline, or barium 

 chloride are contraindicated here, as these agents produce 

 more trouble by their action on the muscles of bowels 

 than they do good. Oils or oil and turpentine is much 

 better; notwithstanding their slower action, they are far 

 surer. The addition of four to eight ounces of ether to 

 the oil is very advantageous. 



