TORSION OF THE DOUBLE COLON 245 



twist was never even called into question. This was 

 showing a sublime disregard for anatomy, I confess ; 

 and perhaps also displayed a certain lack of keenness in 

 observation. Be that as it may, I relate the facts here, 

 for subsequent experience has shown me that in these 

 particular cases, at any rate, many veterinary surgeons, 

 skilled in other directions, are just as sublimely casual. 



For two very good reasons this attitude of indifference 

 at post-mortems on our colic cases ought not to exist. 

 In the first place, once one has trained oneself to expect 

 and afterwards to unravel these cases of displacement, 

 the making of post-mortems in cases of colic becomes, 

 instead of an unpleasant duty, a matter of perennial 

 interest. Secondly, I am convinced that long before one 

 has any great number of these ' finds ' in his notebook, 

 there comes to him, from a sort of subconscious harking 

 back to the phases of a case as he saw it during life, 

 greater powers of diagnosis. Morbid condition and 

 effect are brought nearer the one to the other. Symptoms 

 which during the progress of the case were deemed 

 ' puzzling,' perhaps, but ' of no great import,' stand in 

 an entirely new light, until, in a manner he would find 

 it difficult to explain, the practitioner eventually comes 

 to acquire a proficiency in diagnosis that at one time 

 he would have supposed impossible. 



Moreover, any knowledge we may thus gain concerning 

 these displacements of the colon I am sure will assist us 

 in giving a much more intelligent reading to the symp- 

 toms exhibited in cases of ordinary subacute impaction 

 of the same bowel. 



Particularly have I myself found this to be the case 

 in instances of impaction of the pelvic flexure (see 

 Chapter XXI.). Not only has the constant following 

 up of my fatal cases by post-mortems led me to dis- 



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