RUPTURE OF THE COLON IN A HORSE. 237 
use to throw light on the proper treatment, it follows that the 
treatment is regulated with much difficulty*.” 
This observation is as applicable to veterinary as to human 
medicine. 
For some time past this affection (cholic) has been considered 
as a particular state of the intestinal canal, a disease always the 
same, and identical in every case. Specifics were, therefore, 
sought for; and it was from the too numerous class of irritants 
that these remedies were selected. Beside this, every one who 
performed a cure made a secret of the composition which he had 
invented, or which his predecessor had transmitted to him ; and 
the works on the art of riding, or farriery, or horse medicine, are 
filled with similar recipes, strangely compounded, and deserving 
of eternal oblivion. 
Let us hope that in future the numerous observations of vete¬ 
rinarians will distinguish the characters and symptoms of the 
different species of cholic; and that when they are given to the 
public by the veterinary journals, these observations confined to 
the especial consideration of the organ which is affected, and 
will present to us a more exact and better analyzed description. 
By this means the diagnostic will be more certain, and the j udi¬ 
cious practitioner will be better able to prescribe a rational system 
of treatment, hitherto very difficult to establish in affections of 
this kind. He will be able, at the same time, to form a judgment 
not equivocal as to cases where the lesions are so serious, that 
the power of the most active medicine would be ineffectual; and 
thus be aware of the parts really affected, whether it be stran¬ 
gulation of the intestinal tube, a rupture of the diaphragm, or of 
the stomach, or of any portion of the alimentary canal; a,s was 
the case in the horse which forms the subject of the following 
memoir:— 
On the 8th of December 1826, a bright bay horse, aged be¬ 
tween ten and eleven, of the German breed, and of good con¬ 
stitution, ridden by a trooper of the company of Croi, went at 
considerable speed from Versailles to Paris and back again. 
This horse, which had been in the service of the ordinance for 
six or seven months, was spiteful to the men, and vicious to all 
the other horses ; and therefore he was never properly broken. 
On his return from Versailles he did not eat his corn with his 
usual appetite, and appeared rather dull; but no notice was taken 
of this slight indisposition, which is nevertheless a very import¬ 
ant symptom, and is almost always the forerunner of those in¬ 
flammatory diseases which so often affect our large domestic 
animals. 
* Dictionnaire ties Sciences, 
vol. v. K k 
