258 
TREATMENT OF INJURED BOWEL. 
insert a seton under the belly of an excitable horse, be was unable to separate 
the skin with bis finger and forced to use a probe-pointed bistoury and a seton 
needle. Immediately the operation was completed, a yellow discharge of food 
issued from the wound. Examination with the finger showed that the caecum 
had been divided to the extent of f- of an inch. Within a short time 6 to 7 
quarts of fluid were discharged, the horse during several days having received 
only gruel. Richter expected that the animal would die, but the owner 
determined not to lose its service, and yoked it into a heavy manure waggon. 
Eight days later Richter found his patient working in a plough, and perfectly 
well; in twenty days the seton was removed, and the horse remained perfectly 
healthy. Such favourable conclusions are unfortunately exceptional, but they 
emphasise the importance of always attempting treatment. 
Treatment consists in suturing the injured bowel or uterus with 
sterilised cat-gut or silk. (For further particulars, compare “ Bowel 
Suture.”) The injured organs must then be carefully cleansed and 
disinfected, the wound and its neighbourhood being next attended to. 
Sometimes it may be possible to cleanse the peritoneum by washing out 
the cavity with lukewarm, previously boiled water. It might be useful 
in certain cases to arrange for drainage by inserting strips of iodoform 
gauze, or by packing the parts with the same material, as is done in 
human surgery. The subsequent treatment has already been described. 
The rumen may be incised without danger, as in rumenotomy and 
puncture; but, in horses and dogs, injuries of the stomach are serious; 
more so, in fact, than those of the bowel and uterus. In carnivora they 
are attended with vomiting, but, although serious, are not always fatal. 
The successful use of Haynes’s stomach trochar also testifies that horses 
sometimes survive wounds of the stomach. The treatment of injuries of 
the stomach is similar to that in wounds of the bowel. 
Abdominal wounds, complicated with injury of the kidneys, are 
distinguished by the passage of bloody urine, and are generally 
accompanied by paraplegia. In such cases early slaughter is advisable. 
Injuries to the bladder allow urine to enter the abdominal cavity, and 
are recognised by anuria, sometimes by urine flowing from the abdominal 
wound. They almost invariably result in death ; but recovery occasionally 
occurs, especially in carnivora, as shown by Rodloff s case. Wounds of 
the bowel are sometimes accompanied by the passage of blood-stained 
faeces. In the dog, vomiting of blood indicates injury to the stomach. 
A dog had a penetrating abdominal wound, associated with prolapse of 
the bowel, which was replaced and the wound sewn up by a layman. In 
subsequently operating for the rupture, the bladder was cut into. After 
it had been sewn up and a ligature passed round the hernial sac, both 
healed. Ponfik s latest researches show that, although most injuries to 
the liver end in death, yet they are not necessarily fatal. 
Stockfletli lias collected statistics concerning the progress of abdominal 
wounds, complicated with piolapse of the bowel. In twenty-seven abdominal 
