454 INTRO-SUSCEPTION IN A HORSE. 
tion has not, one might say, commanded attention from observers 
who have reported cases of it. Most of them have failed to 
note the conditions in the midst of which cholics have made 
their appearance, though cholics constituted the only symptom 
by which the intus-susception manifested itself outwardly. 
Some, however, among whom stands M. Renault, have re- 
marked that such horses have drunk cold water after rapid 
work. Others have pushed their investigations farther. M. 
Bouley, for example, has for a long time taught in his clinique 
that cold water, suddenly introduced into the guts, excites 
rapid movements, and, as a consequence, may occasion internal 
strangulations. M. Luscan, in his work, says, “ that possibly 
one may attribute those affections to a nervous excitation of the 
parts of the guts most susceptible of contractility , produced by 
the freshness of food covered with dew, gathered on a cold 
morning in the spring, and immediately carried out of the cold 
field into the warm stable .” In my own practice, in the cli- 
nique at the school, I have often observed a similar action give 
rise to cholics, leading to the presumption of the existence of 
intus-susception or volvulus or internal strangulation. Above 
all things, the ingestion of cold water seems to me, most or- 
dinarily and frequently, to be the determining cause of these 
divers pathological accidents. This assertion is not grounded 
only in observation, but in experimentation as well. For, if we 
cause to be swallowed, or introduced by way of experiment, from 
thirty-five to forty pints of cold water, we observe the intestines, 
the moment the water touches them, briskly contract, move about, 
and turn over : in divers places even the mucous lining is densely 
injected. 
Now, if a horse who is heated from work or has been standing 
in some warm situation greedily drinks more or less of cold 
water, may not the same phenomena ensue which are producible 
through experiment] The intestines doubtlessly experience 
energetic contractions all the way from the pylorus to the caecum : 
in places even their caliber will become diminished, here and 
there the mucous coat will exhibit congestion, and under the in- 
influence of these changes of position, of rapid movements on 
themselves — under the influence even of the anatomical and 
physiological modifications they undergo, it appears to us per- 
fectly allowable to imagine that a contracted knuckle of intestine, 
in a state of congestion, may become entangled in some other 
knuckle pursuing it, less affected by the water, and at times 
even maintained dilated or even gaping by the liquid collected 
being confined between two portions of intestine all but ob- 
literated in their cavities through the sudden retraction of their 
coats together. 
