100 
GASTRITIS. 
many abuses within the Veterinary College, but to rouse from 
their apparent lethargy the Heads of that Institution, and excite 
them to acts more laudably great than any they have hitherto 
been in the habit of performing. In reading your introductory 
paper in the First Number, I was much pleased to find it done 
with so proper and independent a spirit; under such manage¬ 
ment I doubt not that your Journal will widely circulate, and 
eventually raise the Profession to great respectability. 
I am, Sir, 
Your humble Servant, 
N. B. 
Jan. 1828 . 
P.aS. Herewith I transmit you a few cases of Gastritis, occa¬ 
sioned by the Horses eating Haws from the Thorns in the Hedge¬ 
rows : if you think them worthy of a place in your valuable 
Journal, I shall feel obliged. 
‘ During the autumn of the year 1826 I was called profession¬ 
ally to six cases of Gastritis, all showing symptoms precisely the 
same. The pulse threaddy and s.carcely perceptible ; extremi¬ 
ties cold ; skin covered with a dewy perspiration; respiration 
remarkably quick ; at intervals the stomach violently contract¬ 
ing, and when that took place, large quantities of the fluid part 
of its contents ejected through the nostrils, having a peculiar 
acid odour: medicine given in a fluid state was also expelled, in 
the same way. Bleeding seemed to give relief, but it proved 
transitory; medicine was of little avail, and generally, within the 
space of from six to eight hours after I had been called in, the 
animal died. 
On examining the viscera of the abdomen, 1 discovered some 
patches of inflammation upon the duodenum; but the sto¬ 
mach and omentum were so highly inflamed that they had quite 
a purple appearance ; when the stomach was laid open the cause 
of the disease was very.evident. In each case this viscus con¬ 
tained a very hard substance, consisting of Haws and small 
pieces of the Thorn, about the size of a goose’s egg, having a 
rough uneven surface. When the stomach was completely 
emptied of its contents, the villous lining presented mark's of 
the most intense inflammation ; but all around the pyloric ori¬ 
fice the coat was lacerated in various directions; no doubt in 
consequence of the contraction of the stomach, having a natu¬ 
ral tendency to direct the substance to that part, in vvhicli by its 
rough surface it inflicted w^ounds. 
It is very singular that the autumns of 1825 and 1827 did not 
1 
