190 
A CASK OF VOM1TION IN A COW. 
water, first pouring down a little water in order to excite vomit- 
ing, and empty the sac. This was continued four or five days to 
no purpose. 
Morphine and camphor were then exhibited, and continued 
several days with the same result. 
Creasote was then given, with occasional doses of oleaginous 
purgatives ; but no success or amendment followed. The diet 
consisted of bland fluids, as a decoction of linseed, and other 
farinaceous food, with a small quantity of grass. No compact 
food was latterly allowed, from its creating more pain in its 
ejection. This state of things, with alternate vomiting and feed- 
ing, continued until the first of March, when she was slaugh- 
tered as an act of humanity, and to prevent a more lingering and 
painful death from starvation. 
Autopsy . — One hour after death unfolded the mystery, and 
substantiated the diagnosis 1 had entertained — that the injury or 
cause was in the cesophagean canal. The gullet, at its inferior 
part, near to its termination into the cud duct, was enormously 
distended. It was an ovoid sacculation, about one and a haif 
feet in length, eighteen inches in circumference, and with a 
gradual tapering at either extremity. It held also, by admea- 
surement, about six pints of water, and contained five pounds of im- 
perfectly masticated food. Some part of the cyst was nearly pellu- 
cid, from being thinned by over-distention. None of the muscular 
fibres were ruptured. Two or three longitudinal abrasions of the 
cuticular coat of the oesophagus existed ; but they seemed to be 
the result of the repeated vomiting, there being a loss of sub- 
stance, and not a splitting of the membrane. From the entrance 
or commencement of the cesophagean canal not being of so dilat- 
able a material as the oesophagus, the sacculation in its inferior 
extremity was rugose, or puckered, which, in a great measure, 
acted as a barrier to the food falling into the cesophagean canal 
from the effect of gravitation, although some part must have 
done so, as no assistance could be derived from that part of the 
throat that was sacculated. 
In the rumen was found nearly two pecks and a half of pellets, 
varying in weight from one to three ounces. In form they were 
ovoid or globular, and somewhat flattened, and occupied the 
bottom of the rumen. The food that was not moulded was in 
the upper part, and near to the cesophagean canal. 
In breaking down the pellet, it seemed very similar toaegagro- 
phili, or hair balls. I am inclined to think this shews the 
semi-revoluble power of the rumen in forming the pellet for 
rumination. 
On mixing a pellet in water, it formed a pultaceous mass, and 
