CALCULUS IN THE INTESTINES. 
17 ( J 
succeeding days were no other than denote simple “gripes;” not. 
in its very worst character, yet violent enough to raise sufficient 
alarm to keep persons continually on the watch about him, as 
well as to urge the expediency, from time to time, of employing 
fresh or more potent remedies to elicit catharsis. His most con¬ 
stant symptom was pawing ; and, while doing so, nothing 
pleased him more than continually dipping his muzzle into the 
pailful of water hanging up in his box, and shaking the pail 
about, by which he spilt instead of drinking the water. At 
times he would lie down, and while down frequently roll 
upon his back, and in that position remain with his legs in the 
air for ten or twenty minutes together, whenever he could 
manage to prop himself up by reclining his upraised limbs 
against the wall of his apartment. On occasions, he would sit 
upon his haunches after the fashion of a dog, and extend his fore 
limbs straight out in front of him : another change of posture, 
which seemed to afford him relief for a time. Every now and 
then he uttered deep sighs, occasionally amounting to groans; 
and this he continued to do all through his complaint, though 
they became less frequent and sonorous in the latter stages. The 
respiration underwent no disturbance until quite the last stage ; 
nor was the pulse, as I said before, even during the paroxysms of 
pain, of a character denotive either of inflammation or spasmodic 
action. Neither was the mouth hot or dry, nor the tongue any¬ 
wise particularly altered from the state of health. His appetite 
deserted him from the first manifestation of pain, and never 
returned to him : during the thirteen days of his suffering he 
refused food of every kind, his entire sustenance being water, 
of which he drank, on an average, about a pailful and a-half 
in the course of the twenty-four hours. 
This horse had been in the regiment six years, during which 
period he had never been known to ail in any way, either on 
account of sickness or lameness. The calculus which proved 
the cause of his death, large and heavy as it was, with all its 
asperity of surface, never appeared to have occasioned him the 
slightest uneasiness up to the time of its causing him his last 
and fatal illness; which was evidently the result of the ob¬ 
struction it opposed to the passage of the alimentary matters, and 
not of any irritation its presence otherwise occasioned. This is 
an important fact to arrive at; and one we can quite understand 
when we come to find the calculus after death clothed in the al- 
vine contents of the gut, and withal sheathed in the mucous se¬ 
cretion issuing from the internal lining thereof: so that, really, 
the calculus—which in all probability was moveable from one 
part to another of the intestinal canal—rolled about in a bed of 
mucus, by which the sensitive bowel was effectually saved 
from any hurt or annoyance. 
