368 
G. ARCHIE STOCKWELL. 
THE DIARRHEAS OR “SCOURS” OF NURSLINGS: COLTS, 
CALVES AND LAMBS. 
By GK Aeohie Stockwell, M.D., F.Z.S., Member of New Sydenham 
Society (London). 
(■Continued from page 325). 
To recapitulate:—Diarrhoea may be a salutary process 
primarily, and secondarily an ailment sufficiently serious to 
endanger life. The bowel, it must be remembered, is not only 
the medium of absorption of chyle and nourishment, but as 
well the means of ridding the economy of poisonous, effete and 
excrementious matters that, retained, prove detrimental and 
dangerous. Further, we must accept the doctrine that we 
are concerned most of all in the gastro-intestinal diseases of 
nurslings, with the development of bacteria, primarily depen¬ 
dent upon failure of complete digestion, and consequently 
imperfect absorption. 
When a mass of objectionable and indigestible food is con¬ 
sumed, diarrhoea is evidence of Nature’s attempt to repair the 
error. This, too, is the common origin of scouring among 
young animals of all classes and grades, and is due chiefly to 
the curding of milk and lack of power of the digestive juices 
to act thereon ; a hard, firm, indigestible mass is formed which 
no stomach, unaided, can break down, and which, passing 
through the intestine, irritates and tempts inflammatory action. 
Morbid curding too often is the effect of bolting, or hasty 
consumption of milk; and one of the provoking causes in 
calves is, their being allowed to suckle at the same moment 
milking is carried on. In such cases the milk is not sufficiently 
mixed with the secretions of the mouth; bolting incites the 
rumen to too quick action ; the food is hurried to the aboma¬ 
sum ; and the drilling secretion which might meet the food in 
the rumen is obtained too late. Again, curding may be due 
solely to preternatural acidity of the primes vice. 
Scours in colts, not due to e?itozoocz or constitutional tend¬ 
encies, are almost invariably derived from suppressed digestive 
activity, irritating food, or disordered biliary secretion. 
