474 
MR. friend’s reply TO MR. HARRISON. 
It remains now therefore to be proved, that any advantage is to 
be gained by taking such a view of the economy and uses of the 
four stomachs as 1 then exhibited. 1 conceive there is much. 
It has taught me, at any rate, to look with a very different eye in 
all post-mortem examinations than I used to do before I satisfied 
myself of the intimate connection generally subsisting between 
disease of the rumen, reticulum, and manyplus, and derangement 
of the rest of the abdominal viscera ; and I believe that more 
mistakes have arisen in these examinations, from want of atten¬ 
tion to the peculiar uses of these stomachs, than from any other 
cause. 
Is it not surprising, for instance, that when after seven or 
eight days (as in the two cases cited above), during all which 
time nature had, by the most violent efforts, evidently been de¬ 
sirous to get rid of something that oppressed and was destroying 
her, a post-mortem examination exhibits these stomachs full, 
and no remark is made upon the unnatural circumstance? Is it 
not surprising that the exclamation is not immediately made?— 
Here is the secret! this is the load which natui e has been labouring, 
and labouring even unto death, to remove! I am convinced that in 
both these cases, if the rumen and reticulum had been effectually 
relieved in the first instance, that if recovery had not been cer¬ 
tain, yet the chances of it would have been infinitely greater. 
I conceive there was no greater derangement of the abdominal 
viscera than might have been reasonably expected, after so long 
a time sufi’ering under the double evil of highly increased exer¬ 
tion, and unnatural excitation: and the total want of the natural 
stimulus which the food contained in the first three stomachs 
ought to have afforded. 
o ^ , 
These two cases are by no means solitary instances of this 
carelessness, in overlooking such an extraordinary fact, as that 
of a stomach or stomachs not having been at all emptied of their 
contents after seven or eight days’ purging. If you will glance 
your eye over any of these accounts, you will generally find it 
recorded as carelessly, as if it w’ere not at all unnatural; or rather 
even as if it were a proof of health that the paunches were fully 
and this after an abstinence of several days. 
How is this to be accounted for? First, from the erroneous 
opinion already alluded to, of considering them as not imme¬ 
diately under the controul of medicine ; and, secondly, the diffi¬ 
culty of detecting disease in them, further than finding they 
have ceased to act, and still retain the contents they ought to 
have parted with, in the common course of things, some time 
before. I say there is a difficulty, witliouta minute examination, 
of detecting' disease in the rumen and reticulum. There is not 
