240 
CHOLIC FOLLOWED BY RUPTURE. 
December, which was the time when the horse was first per¬ 
ceived to be dull, and not to eat his corn with his usual appetite? 
or did it not take place until the animal was seized with the con¬ 
tinued and violent pains which came on six hours before death ? 
It is most likely that the rupture of the colon may be dated from 
the latter epoch, and that the strangulation was the consequence 
of the rapid journey which the horse took, and which was the 
cause of the abdominal pains. 
That which seems to support this reasoning is, that clysters, 
which were administered from the commencement of the maladv 
until the death of the patient, did not produce any evacuation of 
faecal matter. 
But that which we principally wish to be remarked in the 
enumeration of the symptoms that have been described, is the very 
slight agitation of the flanks. The strangulation of a part of the 
colon, the inflammation and rupture of a portion of this intes¬ 
tine caused but very little difficulty in respiration. Would it 
have been the same in an equally serious lesion of the stomach ? 
Observation proves the contrary. When the stomach is deeply 
affected, there is always such difficulty of breathing, that we are 
tempted to imagine that the principal malady is in the respiratory 
organs. 
Such a coincidence is explained by the position of the stomach 
close to the diaphragm, and pressed upon by it, and it is also 
illustrated by the distribution and function of the pneumogastric 
nerve ; the ingenious researches and theories of Sir Charles Bell 
with regard to which deserve the profoundest attention. The 
difference in the greater or less agitation of the flanks, in the 
diseases of the stomach and large intestines, will be, if properly 
noticed in different patients, a distinctive mark of the affections 
of these two classes of organs; the ruptures of which seem 
otherwise to be attended with the same symptoms. 
We have already observed that the animal whose colon was 
ruptured, did not paw the ground with his fore-feet; that the 
same was observable with regard to two other horses, one of which 
had a rupture of the stomach, and the other a rupture of the di¬ 
aphragm at its aponeurotic expansion. M. Delageutte, a vete¬ 
rinarian, and an attentive observer, tells us more than once that 
in the more serious affections of the abdomen, or when some of 
the intestines are ruptured, the horse does not paw with his fore¬ 
feet. In a treatise on rupture of the stomach and vomiting in the 
horse, this veterinarian makes no mention of this symptom ; and 
we may thence conclude, that it does not appear; and that, in 
different circumstances to those of which we have spoken, it may 
serve as a diagnostic symptom of the real disease. 
