THE THERAPEUTICS OF COLIC. 
457 
ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 
THE THERAPEUTICS OF COLIC. 
By W. L. Williams, Veterinarian to the Agricultural Experiment Station, 
Bozeman, Montana. 
Paper read before the United States Veterinary Medical Association. 
The term colic has been made to include a variety of 
diseases of the abdominal organs due to widely dissimilar 
causes and possessing but one common character, that of ab¬ 
dominal pain, having its origin in some portion of the digestive 
canal. 
This grouping of a number of diseases under one term is 
partly necessary because many of them cannot be clearly dif¬ 
ferentiated during life, although each have characteristics in a 
measure peculiar to themselves which may lead to a probable 
or even positive diagnosis. 
Statistics indicate that ten to twenty per cent, of horses 
affected with colic die, and that forty per cent, of the 
deaths of horses are due to this affection. These statistics 
appear to be largely from city districts, hence apply to work 
horses. In breeding districts these figures are probably en¬ 
tirely too high. 
The difficulty of safely identifying the various diseases of 
this group tends unconsciously to lead to the empirical treat¬ 
ment of the entire group by a common formula, regardless of 
specific indications offered by each individual case. Under 
these conditions we find the treatment of colic unsatisfactory. 
The Munich Veterinary School (Friedberger & Frohner 
Lehrbuch d. Spec. Path. u. Therap. Vol. I, P. 162), has shown 
that an apparently greater per cent, of colic cases recover 
without than with medication. Have we not permitted em¬ 
piricism to displace rational medicine to an unjustifiable 
degree ? 
The conclusions of the Munich Veterinary School are ap¬ 
plicable to several veterinary colleges in our country and to 
the practice of many veterinarians. 
During my first years in practice, when I followed trust- 
