59 EXTRACTS FROM FOREIGN JOURNALS. 
During, his illness, the horse had not ceased for a moment to 
be tormented with violent colicky pains. The right flank was 
more tympanized than the left — the conjunctival membranes 
had been injected — the pulse was small and accelerated — and the 
animal was continually down, rolling upon his back, with his 
legs bent. He refused all nourishment. The treatment con- 
sisted in rubbing him well, leading him about, and administer- 
ing mucilaginous drinks, and also oily and ammoniacal ones ; 
with warm mucilaginous enemeta, and also with cold ones. The 
animal returned them the moment they were injected. He was 
also back-raked, in order to get at an obstruction which his 
attendants thought they had detected at the pelvian curve of the 
intestine. The animal did not pass any dung. 
The immediate return of the injections, would it lead to the 
suspicion that there was an obstruction near the anus? In cases 
very different from this, the injected fluid is occasionally re- 
turned quite as quickly ; therefore no conclusion can be drawn 
from this circumstance. It is to be lamented, that among all 
the symptoms which have been grouped together, and called 
stercoral colic — colic produced by the presence of some mecha- 
nical intestinal obstruction — there are none that will designate, 
with precision, the intestine in which the calculus lies. A cor- 
rect exposition of these symptoms would be invaluable ; and, in 
the present case, there is no doubt that this animal might have 
been saved, had it been known that a man’s arm would reach 
within a few inches of it. 
D. & P. 
There is a method by which the existence of rupture of some 
portion of the intestinal canal may be detected, although not the 
part at which the rupture exists. By placing the fingers under 
the tail, as if with the intention of exploring the pulse at the 
coccygeal artery, rapid convulsiv e movements of the inferior 
coccygeal muscles will occasionally be felt; they indicate rupture 
of the intestine in some portion of its extent. 
The observation of this has occasionally given us great con- 
fidence in our diagnosis, and enabled us to announce a rupture 
of the intestine during the life of the animal, and has prevented 
us from tormenting our patient with drinks and other means and 
appliances, at a time when all medical skill would fail. I par- 
ticularly recollect one case, in which, being consulted about a 
horse, I at once affirmed that nothing could be done, and that 
the animal was irrecoverably lost. I was laughed at for my 
prognosis, and the professor, whom I met, treated it with a 
