FROM ACCUMULATION OF GRAVEL. 
503 
whose legal time of calling on the former vendor was not expired, 
sent to him the summons which he had received from Lerait, 
and a copy of my opinion. His money was immediately returned 
to him, and he immediately refunded to M. Lerait the sum which 
he had given, and so the affair terminated. 
It appeared from information which I obtained from the three 
parties interested, that this horse had been bought from a dis- 
trict through which ran many little shallow streams, and had 
passed the summer there. Finding no water but that which was 
contained in these rivulets, and which was scanty in them, and 
scarcely covered the sand and gravel over which it ran, the horse 
was always obliged to put his lips within a little distance of or 
close to the gravel before he could suck up enough to drink. 
During this sucking a portion of the sand would inevitably enter 
his mouth and find its way with the water into the stomach and 
intestines. This cause continuing to act during a space of four 
months, the quantity of these bodies, although but a little was 
taken at a time, would gradually increase to such a degree as to 
interfere with digestion, and to produce all the phenomena that 
have been described. 
Perhaps all the lesions that were found w r ould have sooner 
taken place if the horse had been worked ; but as he had nothing 
to fatigue him, the only apparent effect of his bad state of diges- 
tion was a gradual loss of flesh. As soon, however, as the nu- 
triment was increased, and the exercise increased too, the diges- 
tion, which before had only been equal to the disposal of (whe- 
ther well or ill) a certain quantity of ordinary food, now could 
not act at all, and acute inflammation of the intestines, with 
gangrene, was necessarily developed. 
Many proprietors of cattle in the country in which I practise 
have assured me, with reference to the action of these foreign 
bodies introduced into the digestive passages of the herbivora, 
that, in the year 1834, a great number of cattle died in many of 
the districts of Brittany, on the opening of which there was 
found a great quantity of sand in the fourth stomach and the 
small intestines, and which had doubtless determined fatal in- 
flammation of the bowels. 
Rec. de Med. Vet., Mars 1837. 
