202 
ON THE STOMACHS OF RUMINANTS. 
the paunch distended with a half-chewed mass, and the many- 
plus also filled with masses which could hardly be improved 
(if drying it were an object) by the oven. In all cases exhibiting 
these symptoms, whether after calving or not, we must not rest 
till we are assured that we have succeeded in emptying all the 
stomachs; if we stop short of this, the animalds lost. 
I the more insist upon this, as I have been deceived myself (and 
I doubt not but others will recognize the delusion) by purgation 
coming on, and giving evident signs of the medicine having gone 
through the animal, when an examination after death has proved, 
as in the case detailed by Mr. Sumner, that the outworks alone 
had been forced, that the citadel had not surrendered ; that our 
artillery had passed harmlessly by it, and that death had taken 
place in consequence of our want of power over the first, second, 
and third stomachs. 
This leads me to make a few remarks on your article before 
alluded to; just premising, that there is a case stated in the 
number for September, by Mr. E. Drake, evidently one of indi¬ 
gestion, and the speedy cure of which immediately raised the 
animal on her legs. In making these remarks, I feel assured you 
will be candid enough to excuse any difference of opinion that 
may exist between us, believing, most sincerely, that every en¬ 
deavour to discover truth will meet with your cordial approba¬ 
tion, even though it may militate against any pre-conceived 
opinion of your own. 
After beautifully describing the passage of the food to the 
first stomach, the structure of the passage, &c., the re-ascent of 
the food along the esophagean canal, and its return after rumi¬ 
nation, you proceed to say, that “ when the fluid part of the ali¬ 
ment glides down the esophagus, the momentum is not sufficient 
to separate the fleshy pillars at the bottom; and that, conse¬ 
quently, the liquid flows on through the manyplus, and into 
the abomasum; and that this accounts for the circumstance men¬ 
tioned by Mr. Sumner, in effect,—that his medicine had not 
entered the first and second stomachs, but had at once gone on 
to the fourth.’^ 
Now, if the premises had been correct, this conclusion would 
have been just also; but I dispute them. After meeting with 
cases of the kind described by Mr. Sumner, I was at a loss how 
to account for the circumstance, that the medicines which I had 
found successful in one case, had failed altogether in a similar 
one; and, after finding that the cause of disease existed in one 
stomach, and that my medicine had found its way into another, 
it occurred to me, in despite of the opinion of others, that either 
my former practice had been to no purpose, and that nature had 
