154 
ON ENTERITIS. 
handsomely towards the replacing of them, or an action would 
have been brought against him. 
A gentleman’s servant some time ago gave a dose of physic to 
his master’s horse, and it did him much good: he gave him another 
dose some time afterwards, of double the strength, and it killed him. 
—His reasoning was this : that, as the first dose did him a deal 
of good, one double the strength would do him double the good. 
Treatment ,—The treatment of these cases depends entirely on 
the supposed cause of the disease. If the pain and state of the 
pulse indicate nothing more than spasm of the bowels, I ge¬ 
nerally give §ij spirit, tereb. combined with ^ij tinct. opii, and 
twenty drops of ol. menth. pip. ; and if this does not answer the 
purpose, I repeat it in half or three-quarters of an hour, and 
have recourse to a pretty severe bleeding ; indeed, in many cases 
I bleed at first, in order to save trouble, and consider it a prudent 
practice to adopt in the generality of cases. 
As to giving purgatives in enteritis, I think it, upon the whole, 
not a desirable practice, seeing, as I said before, that in most in¬ 
stances we have no reason to believe that constipation is present; 
yet, undoubtedly, there are cases where it is essentially necessary 
to do so; indeed, in many instances I am accustomed to give a 
little so as to produce an aperient effect; but this is oftener 
done to please the owner than I think is beneficial, and which I 
do not intend to do so often in future. 
It may be said, that you are only applying the medicine to a 
membrane that is not principally diseased, and that it may act 
as a sort of counter-irritant to the muscular or peritoneal coats ; 
but I should be doubtful of this, as there is great sympathy be¬ 
tween the coats. If you get rid of the inflammation, in most 
cases the bowels will act of themselves, or be induced to act by 
merely giving a little aperient medicine in a day or two after the 
prominent symptoms have subsided. Do not be in a hurry here! 
That opium will produce sleep in the horse I have not a shadow 
of a doubt, as I am sure that I have seen it scores of times 
whilst attending horses with colic and enteritis. I formerly gave 
it in half-drachm doses, but within these few last years have 
given it in drachm doses, made, so as to insure his getting it, 
into a very soft ball, and in the course of half an hour, or at 
most an hour, its effects have been produced in a most evident way 
by his hanging his head and nodding, even until his nose has often 
touched the ground. This has continued for half an hour to an 
hour, and at the same time the pulse has been considerably 
lowered, and the system calmed. Sometimes, of course, I give 
'it in a liquid state. I have given it both before and after bleed- 
