152 
ON ENTERITIS. 
grass, the eddish having been strong, or tlie meadow lands 
coarse and rank/^ I saw a fine cart-horse, belonging to a 
farmer near this place, that shewed symptoms of belly-ache, 
or indigestion, on three successive Fridays, the cause of which 
I at length traced to his having eaten some rank grass that had 
grown on a flooded croft, near the house. The grass was dis¬ 
continued, and he ceased to have the attacks. I recollect another 
farmer having three of his horses attacked, one after the other, 
in a similar way ; but they got well. Two other cases, from eat- 
ing young grass and clover, I have mentioned under a previous 
head. 
On vomition, Mr. Daws remarked, “ that he had always found, 
that when any obstruction had taken place, either through hernia, 
strangulation, or intussusception, efforts to vomit were observed 
if so, it does not at all agree with my observation, as I never 
saw it, with only one exception, and which was slight and mo¬ 
mentary, and which I thought as likely to have arisen from the 
medicine, in all the cases that I have witnessed, although I have 
generally been with my patients as much and as long as I could 
while they were labouring under the disease. In fact, I took a 
sort of interest in bowel complaints, and that in consequence of 
having had so many under my hand. 
There are some cases of a very insidious and deceptive cha¬ 
racter, the principal and prominent symptoms of enteritis, during 
life, being in a manner absent. The pain may be, to all outward 
appearance, slight—nothing more than a little uneasiness—and 
the respiration scarcely affected, until within a few hours of death, 
when the symptoms have been as violent as in other cases. 
On opening the horse in such cases, very slight vestige of the 
disease is to be seen, though generally sufficient to shew what it 
was. There are others where the symptoms have been exceed¬ 
ingly violent, and yet, like the last-mentioned, little ravages of 
the disease were to be seen. In these latter cases must we attri¬ 
bute the slight inflammation discovered to the good effect of 
bleeding; but that, and the great debility produced by the disease, 
the contrary effect on the constitution ? 
In one case I recollect offensiveness of breath and a most 
offensive discharge from the bowels ; and on opening the horse, 
there was about a yard of the small intestines in a state of morti¬ 
fication. This was the evident source of the smell and the dis¬ 
charge. There was little pain in this case during the seven 
hours previous to his death that I saw him. 
Last summer I had a case of superpurgation, brought on by 
eating a quantity of oats in the straw ; and in two days after 
this, and while carrying more oats, the horse escaping and 
