CHOKING IN CATTLE. 
231 
the gullet is a hollow tube, force is used, and rupture is produced 
either in the fixed or upper part, or the floating portion within the 
pleural cavity. 
Another great evil is the employment of instruments whose tops 
are made of soft metal, such as lead, which soon become ragged or 
rough from being sometimes accidentally bitten by the bullock : this 
is a very frequent cause of fatal laceration. The force required to 
break through the gullet in a line with the muscular fibres is not 
very great, of which any one may soon convince himself by having 
the oesophagus or gullet of an animal fresh killed at a slaughter¬ 
house, and putting an apple or potatoe into it a little larger than the 
opening in the canal; it will then be discovered that but little force 
is required to burst it through. Since so many useful machines 
for cutting turnips, &c. have been in use, hoven is not so frequent: 
the pieces being either flat, square, or cylindrical, are not so likely 
to block up the whole of the throat, and thereby prevent the escape 
of the generated air of the rumen, as a rounded substance. 
Nov/ all round bodies accidentally swallowed, and becoming im¬ 
pacted in the throat, are more dangerous, and require quicker relief, 
than substances of a dissimilar form. A few years since an in¬ 
stance occurred to a cow belonging to a friend of mine, which was 
driven into the farm-yard in the morning to be milked, when the 
rumen was filled with grass and wet with dew. A basket of 
potatoes chanced to be left in her way, and she eagerly caught up 
one in her mouth and bolted it. The air in the rumen was pre¬ 
vented from escaping, and so rapidly did she become blown, that in 
ten minutes she was dead. I arrived just after her death, and my 
friend, Mr. Henwood, requested me to examine the obstructing 
body. It was a potatoe, firmly wedged about two feet down in the 
gullet; and although it had been there but so short a period, it was 
beginning to get soft on the surface. 
The danger in choked cattle is not very great, unless the ani¬ 
mal swells. Distention of the rumen as a consequence of choking 
requires different methods of treatment, which will be pointed out 
as I proceed. The probang should be moderately stiff, and the 
ends made of either brass or iron. The one I have been in the 
habit of using has moveable ends, so that I am enabled to affix 
three different sizes on the same tube, which is of great advantage, 
as the following case Avill shew:—Mr. Wm. Partridge, of Aller 
Farm, Sandford, belonging to John Quicke, Esq., of Newton House, 
had a cow choked a few years since. Having a tube of his own, 
I did not take mine. In the morning I endeavoured to remove the 
obstructing body, but could not succeed. In the evening of the 
same day I tried again, but with no better result; and I then gave 
it up as a lost case. The butcher was sent for; but in the mean 
