506 
OBSERVATIONS ON STERCOlfAL COLIC. 
CASE IX. 
A horse, ten years old, had colicky pains for some days, which 
returned regularly two or three hours after feeding. They were 
accompanied by a slight enlargement of the abdomen, which dis¬ 
appeared after fifteen or twenty minutes’ walking exercise. The 
proprietor had given him mucilaginous drinks and emollient in¬ 
jections without effect. I gave at once sixty grains of emetic 
tartar, and thirty more tw-elve hours afterwards. Six hours after 
the second dose, purging commenced. In four days he was re¬ 
turned to his owner perfectly well. 
M. Clichy, after relating three other successful cases,concludes 
by stating, that it is probable that many horses w^ould have died 
of stercoral cholic, if he had neglected to employ the emetic tar¬ 
tar, and perhaps that others would not have died if it had been 
used. 
Recueil Med, Vet., Jul^, ISSS, 
With the exception of the three last cases recorded by M. Clichy, 
we have inserted the wdiole of this somewhat unsatisfactory pa¬ 
per. We were at a loss to conceive in what manner the relief was 
obtained ; for, when we read the first successful case, we were 
inclined to think that it was by the expulsion of the concretion 
itself; yet we wondered that M. Clichy did not say so: but w’e 
afterw^ards found, or rather guessed (for the author does not 
mention even this), that it was by means of a sudden dissolving 
of the ball, through some strong chemical action between the tar- 
tarized antimony and the contents of the ball. But all this we 
are left to guess at. In our practice we have never found emetic 
tartar act as a purgative in these small doses; and we have 
rarely or never known these concretions dissolved in the act of 
simple purging; although they have sometimes, as at first we ima¬ 
gined to be the case here, been brought aw ay bodily. We rather 
wondered, too, that if tartar emetic was this boasted specific, that 
M. Clichy should not sooner have recourse to it; and that he 
should lose a horse or two, and hazard others, by prolonged ex¬ 
periments with his inert mucilaginous drinks and emollient in¬ 
jections. However, it is a valuable paper ; and if emetic tartar 
is this almost-specific in cases of stercoral concretion, the profes¬ 
sion wall be grateful to M. Clichy for the aid he brings in cases 
hitherto so desperate.— Edit. 
