ANALYSIS OE CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 
G3 
period when the first signs of colic were exhibited by the 
horse, and that the lesion was more or less directly the cause 
of the subsequent intestinal pains which preceded the fatal 
termination by peritonitis. The perfect health the animal 
enjoyed up to two years of age did not allow the origin of 
the disease to be carried further back,—while the predisposi¬ 
tion to the digestive disturbance manifested subsequently 
proves that, notwithstanding the disappearance of the in¬ 
flammatory phenomena, which were very probably the cause 
of the primary colics, the intestine did completely recover its 
normal characters. 
The morbid manifestations witnessed during the life of the 
patient were not sufficiently characteristic to enable any one 
to recognise the nature of all the alterations to which they 
were due ; but on discovering the lesions after death it is easy 
to account for nearly all the pathological processes. The 
symptoms observed at the same time as the primary mani¬ 
festations of colic, and the favorable influence exercised on 
the morbid disturbance by the antiphlogistic treatment, 
leads to the belief that the pathological process going on at 
that time was of an inflammatory nature. The reappearance 
of the intestinal pains in April, 1870, after each ingestion of 
solid food, may have been caused by an exaggerated irrita- 
bilitv of the intestinal mucous membrane; but the disturb- 
ance in the peristaltic movements occasioned at first by the 
inflammatory infiltration, and, later, by this infiltration and 
the dissociation of the muscular elements of the intestine, or 
by the latter lesion only, have certainly not been without 
influence in these attacks of colic; for this disturbance was 
a favorable condition to the accumulation of alimentary 
matters in the diseased intestinal loop, and the distension of 
the latter. The professor thinks that the muscular lesion 
was produced during the evolution of these primary colics, 
as after that period the intestinal functions were only properly 
performed as long as the patient received food capable of easy 
digestion. 
The transition from green to dry forage provoked new 
attacks of colic, because the contents of the intestine were 
then harder and drier, and the imperfect peristaltic contrac¬ 
tions, which had previously been sufficient to displace these 
contents, were now insufficient to carry them along. Con¬ 
sequently, the ingested matters accumulated in the situation 
corresponding to the rupture of the muscular layer and dis¬ 
tended the intestinal parietes, and this distension would ac¬ 
count for the reappearance of colic and the increase in 
the solution of continuity in the muscular tunic. The 
