458 
W. L. WILLIAMS. 
ingly the methods dictated by authors and teachers, my 
losses from colic were appalling, costing me many anxious 
hours and valued patrons, but as necessity and reason drove 
me farther and farther from what I thought classic metfiods 
and taught me a higher appreciation of nature’s powers and 
her abhorrence of unnecessary 
became very much less. 
If we are to handle colic without violence to natural 
methods we must apply to it greater knowledge and judg¬ 
ment than to any other internal malady. The confusion in 
its treatment is shown by the endless number of remedial 
agents used without any apparent order. One will have the 
patient lie, another stand, another walk, or trot or run. 
One relies on anassthetics, another on sedatives, another on 
stimulants or carminatives, another upon astringents, and 
others upon laxatives or purgatives. Not a few combine 
several or many of them in inextricable confusion, or give to¬ 
gether two diametrically opposed drugs, as, opium with oil, 
or aloes, in such proportions as to partly or wholly counteract 
each other. 
Among the diseases grouped under the common head of 
colic, because not always distinguishable from each other, we 
must recognize for therapeutic reasons, numerous pathologi¬ 
cal conditions due to various causes among which are : 
meddling in disease, my losses 
i. 
2 . 
3 * 
4 - 
5 - 
Dietetic colic: 
a Overfeeding colic, b Colic due to damaged or im¬ 
properly prepared food, c Starvation colic. 
Obstruction colic: 
a Impaction colic, including the impaction of dry, woody 
food in the large intestines of adults, the retained 
meconium or ingested straw or hay of young foals, and 
the gummy feces occasionally seen in horses at pasture 
on green grass, b Mechanical obstruction, (i) Volvu¬ 
lus. (2) Intussusception. (3) Hernias. (4) Tumors. 
Colic due to paralysis of the intestines. 
Colic due to the interruption of the gastro-intestinal blood 
suppl}\ a Thrombosis, b Embolism. 
Reflex nervous colic due to exposure, fatigue and other' 
causes—spasmodic colic. 
