670 ON THE ANALOGY BETWEEN THE GRIPES 
plaint, and how it should be treated by properly sustained mea¬ 
sures in aid of the medicine—(See “ Essay on Gripes of Horses/’ 
London, 1816)—I believe, in the different large breweries in this 
metropolis that I at that time attended, some thousand pounds 
worth of horses were saved by what I called a duly sustained 
treatment of the complaint, of which testimonies were given 
me, which appear at the end of the above treatise. 
In respect to the cause of the disease, I traced it satisfactorily, 
at its commencement, to an insufficient power in the alimentary 
organs to carry on and perfect the digestive process, either from 
the accession of some debilitating cause, which rendered these 
organs unequal to the task, or from the unfavourable nature of 
the contents of the viscera as to quality or quantity, or from both 
or all these causes combined. The lowering agency of a sudden 
chill to the abdomen would alone produce it under ordinary cir¬ 
cumstances, and still more easily if a refractory quality or unusual 
quantity was superadded. Derangement or suppression of the 
chylifacient process would take place in the intestines, and the 
disease be carried on there to its termination in death; or it 
might be communicated by sympathy or by connexion to the 
stomach, or vice versa , beginning in the stomach and carried to 
the bowels. In either case, the suppression or arrestation of the 
digestive process would quickly produce tormina; which, if not 
relieved by the restoration of digestion, would quickly terminate 
in death, either by inflaming the mucous membrane of the bowels 
or stomach, or by its operation upon the brain through the agency 
of the nerves of the stomach. In horses, who could withstand a 
severer shock of this sort than the more sensitive human being, 
inflammation would have time to establish itself pretty fully in 
the membranes of the bowels, and produce appearances not very 
unlike what Dr. Annesley has given in his work on Indian Cho¬ 
lera ; for extreme violence in the attack from several causes, 
combined with great strength of constitution to resist it, would 
have much the same effect in the animal as often happened in 
the cases related in India. 
We may, perhaps, illustrate the cause of the sudden termination 
of the complaint in the following way :—that many substances 
assume a poisonous quality if they are not digested, but if 
digested they are perfectly inert. 
If you give to a horse four ounces of the leaves of the yew tree, 
on an empty stomach, it will destroy him in a few hours, and but 
a very slight appearance of inflammation will the stomach exhi¬ 
bit, in petechise or spots of the size of the little-finger nail. But 
if to this quantity of the acrid vegetable you add eight ounces of 
oats, and mix them together, he will eat the whole, will digest 
