270 THE COMMON COLICS OF THE HORSE 



of the symptoms he is now presented with occurred only 

 some several hours after such feeding. 



If he has had experience of these cases before, he is 

 now sufficiently alarmed. He becomes further alarmed 

 when he sees the persistence of four other symptoms 

 which I shall next endeavour to describe. These are — 

 (i) A peculiar crouching movement prior to lying down ; 

 (2) the continuance of the pain when in the recumbent 

 position ; (3) the expression of countenance ; (4) a gradu- 

 ally increasing pallor of the conjunctival and buccal 

 mucous membranes. 



The ' crouching ' movement in these cases is most 

 noticeable. Quite suddenly in his hurried walk of pain 

 the animal will lean to one side, bending low to the 

 ground as though to drop, and then just as suddenly re- 

 cover himself to continue his hurried walk. This is 

 done, not once, but repeatedly, until to the veterinarian, 

 anxiously waiting to see what pose the animal will 

 assume when down, it seems that he will never take the 

 floor. 



Finally he goes down, and we then get evidence of the 

 continuance of the pain. A stretched-out position on 

 the side is not maintained. More often than not he sits 

 in the manner of a dog alert, with fore-limbs stretched 

 straight in front of him. Another marked symptom then 

 presents itself. I can best describe it by saying that one 

 has often seen a dog lying thus, when suddenly startled, 

 make a sudden movement to rise, and then, when only 

 half-way up, as though reassured, just as suddenly sub- 

 side. This the animal does continuously while down. 



The third symptom, a peculiarly haggard expression 

 of the face, although very evident to the practised veter- 

 inarian, is not easy to describe. 1 can best indicate it 

 by likening it to the expression a man wears with badly 



Digitized by Microsoft® 



