I 
S30 EXTRACTS FROM FOREIGN JOURNALS. 
INDIGESTION AND INTESTINAL OBSTRUCTION RELIEVED BY 
PILOCARPINE. 
By Mr. P. Waldteufel. 
The patient was a strong and healthy horse, aged nine 
years. He had been suffering with indigestion for twelve 
hours, and notwithstanding the various forms of treatment 
which had been applied, was getting worse, his condition 
being such that the owner had decided to have him killed 
and prepared for the butcher. 
The author, desiring to make some experiments with pilo¬ 
carpine, and to watch the sedative effects of the drug, gave 
him a subcutaneous injection of one gram of a one-fortieth 
solution of nitrate of pilocarpine, followed by a second twenty 
minutes later. Being obliged to suspend the experiment for 
the time, by the pressure of other business, he returned some 
six hours later, expecting to find the patient in the last ex¬ 
tremity. The animal was then lying down, with an extremely 
weak pulse, the mucous membranes pale, the abdomen ex- 
tremely tympanitic, and the head continually turned toward 
the flank. There had been no passage from the bowels, and 
had been occasionally violent struggling. Three successive 
injections, similar to those previously administered, were im¬ 
mediately given. Fifteen minutes later an abundant saliva¬ 
tion appeared, and the animal seemed to be quieter. His 
body was covered with perspiration, and his pulse was 
’ stronger, and, after half an hour, gasses began to be expelled 
by the anus. In the presence of this comparative improve¬ 
ment, the patient was, after receiving a rectal injection of 
mustard water, made comfortable for the night. The next 
morning the animal was found standing up, and ready to eat 
his breakfast. During the night he discharged an enormous 
mass of hard faeces, which stood piled in a heap behind him. 
The three grams of the one-fortieth solution had done 
the work, first, by quieting the pain, through its sedative 
effect, and then by giving rise to a hypersecretion of the entire 
glandular system of the digestive canal, which, by lubricating 
the mucous membrane, had produced the softening and stimu¬ 
lated the expulsion of the excrementitial mass originally caus¬ 
ing the obstruction. 
