228 THE COMMON COLICS OF THE HORSE 



not at all fit in with the fact as observed at post-mortems, 

 that the csecal contents are nearly always watery, and in 

 any case never thicker than pea-soup. Moreover, if 

 Ellenberger's facts are correct, we should certainly expect 

 an impacted caecum to be a far more frequent occurrence 

 than apparently it is. 



If we accept Smith's view, that the food need not 

 necessarily enter the caecum, but may be, and perhaps 

 commonly is, passed directly from the ileum into the 

 colon, or if we assume for ourselves that it is passed into 

 the caecum but is again just as regularly passed out, then 

 it appears to me we shall come to some understanding of 

 caecal impaction as an infrequent but a serious abnor- 

 mality in cases of colic. 



For instance, taking the view that the colon is the 

 main receptacle for the voluminous feeds taken into the 

 body, and assuming we have a case of subacute impaction 

 of that viscus due to a semi paralytic condition of its walls, 

 we begin to look back and imagine what effect such a 

 state of affairs will have on the caecum and its functions. 



With the colon thus gradually filling, a stage must be 

 reached in which no further food can enter. If food is 

 still taken (and until actual colic pains manifest them- 

 selves, no doubt it occasionally is), then if the food were 

 passing through the caecum on its way to the colon a 

 case of caecal impaction would result every time. Seeing 

 that, as far as we yet know, caecal impaction is fatal, and 

 of rare occurrence, then it would appear such is not the 

 usual road of the ingesta. 



Taking the same set of circumstances again, but this 

 time accepting the view that the food is passed direct 

 from the ileum into the colon, we shall now expect to get, 

 following the impaction, simply a condition of stasis in 

 the ileum, and a feeling of inordinate fulness of the 



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