FUNCTION IN TYMPANITIS. 
441 
tion has been made, arrives at the inferior part of the oesophagus. 
The animal then expires, and the mass which the contraction of 
the spiral muscular fibres of the oesophagus had caused to escape 
through the oesophagean opening of the diaphragm — relaxed and 
dilated during expiration — remounts into the mouth by the anti- 
peristaltic motion of that tube. We are unable to say whether 
this process is altogether involuntary, as Brugnone thinks it to be, 
or whether the animal can, at pleasure, cause the food to pass 
from the reticulum into the oesophagus by the aid of certain inspi- 
ratory movements. This last opinion, however, seems to derive 
some support from the fact, that the animal suddenly suspends the 
process of rumination at the sight of any extraordinary object, or 
at any loud and unexpected noise, and then, after a certain lapse 
of time, again begins to chew the cud. 
Soft and farinaceous food, bread, boiled potatoes, carrots, turnips 
which are reduced to a pultaceous mass during their continuance 
in the paunch, are not ordinarily returned to the mouth, but pass 
from the rumen and the reticulum into the maniplus, as Duvemey, 
Haller, Bourgelat, Pozzi, and Brugnone have proved. Fresh and 
soft grasses are partially ruminated; but it is principally on the 
hard and coherent food, as straw, hay, and dry leaves, that this 
comminuting process is performed. 
The aliment returned to the mouth is, by the lateral grinding 
motion of the lower jaw under the powerful action of the ptery- 
goidean muscles, reduced to a homogenous pulpy state, and abun- 
dantly saturated with saliva. If it was not originally very hard, 
thirty or forty lateral movements of the jaw suffice to crush it; but 
when it has been very fibrous or shelly, from fifty to eighty move- 
ments of the jaw have been counted. 
Having been thus a second time masticated and comminuted, 
the aliment does not return to the paunch, as Payer asserts, nor to 
the reticulum, as Duverney, Glisson, and Brugnone maintain; but 
it forms a semi-fluid bouillie, which passes without impediment 
into the maniplus, through the oesophagean canal. 
[To be continued.] 
PUNCTION IN TYMPANITIS. 
By Professor STEWART, Andersonian University , Glasgow. 
Case I. 
In the 9th vol. of The Veterinarian there is recorded by 
me a case of intestinal tympanitis relieved by punction. I purpose 
now stating my further experience of that operation. 
