OF INTESTINE, 
427 
my duty to relate cases of the description of the one I have here 
given. 
If I were asked, how it happened that this double of intestine 
could have got into a place never intended for it, and one that is 
by nature only just large enough for the passage of the single 
gut which runs through it; I would answer, that it was probably 
impelled there by the same causes which operate in the production 
of hernia; and that, being once displaced, its return is hindered 
by the subsequent distension with air, which invariably in such 
cases takes place: to which is also ascribable the strangulation. 
The causes producing hernia are admitted to be various; but, if 
we may be allowed to take the authority of those who aie in the 
habit of seeing vastly more of the disease than we ourselves are, 
none is more common than the commotions excited among the guts 
by colic. They become contracted in volume ; their natural pe- 
ristalic action becomes disturbed, hurried, increased in force, 
and often inverted; under which state of excitement it is that 
some portion or portions of intestine force themselves into holes and 
passages before inadmissible to them. And of all the intestines 
the ileum is the most likely one to get into such a prison; from 
the circumstances of its being a gut having more convolutions, 
and those convolutions smaller and possessing more extensive 
motions, than those of any other. It appears to me to be quite a 
mistaken notion to suppose that in these cases of strangulation, 
the gut is displaced from the very onset , and is itself the origina¬ 
tion of the colic. Quite the reverse, in my opinion. I should 
say, that the case was really one, in the beginning, of common colic ; 
and that the displacement, twist, knot, introsusception, or what¬ 
ever it might be, occurred in the course of the peristaltic commo¬ 
tion, ,and the efforts and struggles which the animal himself was 
making to counteract the pain produced by it. In the case of 
introsusception * related by M. Renault, it is very pertinently ie- 
marked, that i * introsusception is probably of more frequent occur¬ 
rence than we are aware; ’ and it is added “that is (the intro¬ 
susception) was here (in the case related) evidently the conse¬ 
quence , and not the cause of spasm.” I his is principally what I 
wish to be understood to mean in my interpretation of the present 
case:—that the strangulation was an effect and not the cause of 
the paroxysm of gripes with which the animal was attacked in 
the mom ins:, and occasional fits similar to winch he had been the 
O' 
subject for many years. 
If there be any foundation for this pathology, it tends to impose 
upon us more than ever the urgent necessity there exists for 
* la this Journal, Vol. I, page 379. 
