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DISEASES OF THE PHARYNX AND (ESOPHAGUS. 
YII.—DISEASES OF THE PHARYNX AND (ESOPHAGUS. 
(1.) FOREIGN BODIES IN THE PHARYNX AND 
(ESOPHAGUS. 
Foreign bodies in the pharynx are most frequently found in carnivora. 
Bones, fish spines, needles, pieces of wood, taken with the food, or picked 
up in play, sometimes stick in the pharynx. (See Cadiot and Dollar’s 
“Clinical Veterinary Medicine and Surgery,” p. 846, for reported cases.) 
In dogs and cats, sewing needles are often found at the base of the 
tongue close in front of the epiglottis. Pieces of potato or of other roots 
get lodged in the pharyngeal pouch of swine. In herbivora, pieces of 
wood, bones, hair-pins, and the like may become fixed in the mucous 
membrane of the pharynx, but more frequently lodge in the oesophagus. 
In ruminants, especially in cattle, the offending substances are generally 
shoes, foetal membranes, cloth, pieces of potato, fruit, or turnip ; in horses, 
carrots, chad, linseed cake or hay; whilst occasionally the obstacle is a tooth, 
a hen s egg, a bolus, a portion of a prickly plant, or a piece of wood or bone. 
Grimm found a piece of a lamp chimney in the oesophagus of a cow. 
Mobius found a thorn about 5 inches in length. Moller removed a whip 
handle about 3 feet long from a horse’s oesophagus. Dandrieux extracted a 
snake 10 inches in length from the gullet of a cow. Iwersen found a hair 
ball in the oesophagus of an ox, eructated from the stomach. 
Foreign bodies remain fixed either because they are sharp and 
penetrate the mucous membrane, or are too large to pass the narrow 
poition of the oesophagus, or because the oesophagus has undergone 
contraction, which interferes with their passage. In horses, stoppage 
of the oesophagus with hay results from swelling of the bronchial 
glands, from the presence of tumours in it (melanosarcomata), and from 
external compression. Cadiot and Dollar report a case of oesophagus 
obstruction in a horse from swallowing a piece of carrot. A hypodermic 
injection of pilocaipine and eserme resulted in the foreign body passing 
onwards into the stomach in about three-quarters of an hour. (“Clinical 
Veterinary Medicine and Surgery,” p. 845.) In moribund animals, the 
food taken sometimes remains in the oesophagus, and occludes long 
sections of it. Whether paralysis of the tube ever occurs is questionable. 
The portions of the oesophagus where bodies are usually arrested are_ 
(1) The commencement of the tube immediately behind the pharynx. 
(2) The lower portion in the neck. 
(8) The point where it perforates the diaphragm. 
Diseased conditions which produce obstruction will be dealt with 
elsewhere. At this point only the two first of the above conditions will 
be considered ; and as obstruction produces different results in different 
