ACUTE INDIGESTION. 
321 
animal. However, we all have some combination we have 
found to suit our cases the best, and that to-day is the only 
object of this paper. I hope to offer at least one preparation 
which is not generally used and I have not as yet seen it advo¬ 
cated. We should bear in mind that the conditions existing in 
acute indigestion are dependent upon a certain quantity, more 
or less, of sour, fermenting, decomposing food, and whatever 
may be done to alleviate its effects is only weakly palliative, 
and we must strike at the root of the evil, the cause, to prevent 
fatal effects, and at the same time use remedies which will pre¬ 
serve and encourage the normal secretions and stimulate the 
natural peristaltic motions of the digestive tract. While all 
other adjuncts that in any way assist—as external applications 
of stimulating liniments, injections of warm water per rectum, 
and protecting the animal from unnecessarily injuring itself, 
etc., should be conscientiously observed. 
If the contents of the stomach are in a fermentative, yeasty, 
sour condition, and not sweet and mildly digesting, as it should, 
then some force has acted to diminish the essentials of diges¬ 
tion, and we must supply them, for the stomach and bowel 
tract will later take much easier care of digesting food than 
sour refuse forced through them by rough irritating cathartics, 
with all their* attending dangers, and here I say and believe that 
cathartics are worse than useless, if a rational treatment is pre¬ 
scribed. 
I grant that if any preparation of opium is used, yes, in 
fact, most any opiate, to relieve and make your patient quiet, 
that a purge will become a necessity, and your complications 
are liable to be many instead of few. Do not misunderstand 
me, and think me heartless because I oppose opiates in acute 
indigestion, for I believe the patient will suffer less in the end 
by discarding them, especially in the early and middle stages. 
In selecting, as I have above mentioned, a digestive princi¬ 
ple that I believe is wanting and needed in these cases, I have 
received with surprise and greatest satisfaction what to me has 
been startling results in some of the worst cases it has been my 
