THE COMMON COLICS OF 

 THE HORSE. 



CHAPTER I 



•COLIC,' ITS DEFINITION 



CoNCERN'iNG a disorder that has been recognised and 

 treated for years beyond the memory of man, one would 

 imagine that its name, and what that name conveyed, 

 would be well known and understood. Such, however, 

 is not the case. 



The word ' colic ' is derived from the Latin colictis or 

 the Greek kolihos, signifying the colon, and, strictly em- 

 ployed, means a painful, spasmodic affection of the 

 intestines, especially of the colon. Far from retaining 

 such a simple signification, colic, in the horse, has for a 

 long time served to designate innumerable and widely 

 differing diseases, whose only point in common has been 

 the evidence of abdominal pain. The term must 

 necessarily be most vague when it attempts to offer any 

 explanation of a particular case in which the symptoms 

 are most largely those of pain in the abdomen. If we 

 U§e the word in its most restricted sense, it should mean 



Digitized by Microsoft® 



