THE THERAPEUTICS OF COLIC. 
469 
normal intestinal functions. Small, laxative doses of morphine 
frequently act nicely, relieving the pain and tending to over¬ 
come the disease. In one of my cases of a heavy draft mare 
in high condition and idle, one-half grain doses of morphia 
repeated two or three times daily controlled the colic per¬ 
fectly, and on the sixth day without other medication the 
bowels moved normally and recovery was complete without 
purgation, while purgation would probably have led to 
superpurgation with unfavorable results. In fact, my obser¬ 
vations of the use of morphine in intestinal paralysis, suggest 
strongly its use in severe impaction. 
The treatment of volvulus and intussusception, owing to 
the difficulty of exact diagnosis, must be unsatisfactory. In 
the present state of our knowledge it should be practicable, 
where positive diagnosis is possible, to give relief surgically. 
In cases where they are suspected and surgical correction 
not undertaken, only palliative means are to be attempted, 
such as the relief of pain, prevention of gaseous distension 
and abstention from purgatives. 
There is much variation in views as to the causation of 
these displacements, some ascribing them to the irregular 
muscular contractions of colics, others to the contractions in¬ 
duced by purgatives and others, in cases of volvulus, to the 
rolling of the animal during the agony of colic. The impor¬ 
tant point to consider in our present theme is the possibility 
of producing or preventing them during our care of a colic 
patient. Volvulus is largely attributed by writers to violent 
rolling, but, strangely enough, apparently occurs most fre¬ 
quently, according to statistics furnished by these writers, 
where the rolling is prevented as far as practicable, so that 
others, notably, Friedberger and Frohner, in whose opinion I 
concur, think this has been brought into too great promi¬ 
nence. In fact rolling is quite as likely, I think more likely, 
to correct such displacements than to cause them. 
In a practice of sixteen years, without recorded numbers, 
but perhaps light in colics, in which I have habitually made 
post-mortem examinations when practicable, I have found but 
one case of volvulus, that involving the entire casco-colic 
