476 
DR. BYRNE. 
Third .—If the horse is a cribber, let him wear a strap round 
his neck, and feed totally off the ground. 
Fourth .—If the teeth are the cause, remove decayed ones, 
and the protruding parts of others cut off and rash down. 
Fifth .—If from hots or other parasites, prescribe for their 
removal and the disease will subside. 
Indeed, many of the milder cases of indigestion may be cured 
by rest, change of diet and stable management; the body and 
legs kept warm with clothing and bandages; the stall or box well 
fitted and kept clean; the food given often and in small quan¬ 
tities—in summer a vernal grass or green food—in winter carrots 
and half shorts or bran with his corn or oats. Occasionally small 
doses of physic followed with tonics. If the animal bites the 
walls or licks the lime of the same, or eats earth, it is indicative 
of heartburn. Discontinue his oats and corn for a few days and 
feed on boiled oats and bran mashes and bi-carb. soda in half to 
one ounce doses three times a day, and also, as in other cases, 
small doses of physic and tonics. Severe purging does harm, but 
mild laxatives with good nursing, change of diet given in small 
quantities, with moderate slow exercise, will often be all that is 
necessary. 
Now, if the case be an acute one, and the stomach overloaded, 
it becomes a very serious matter, and it will depend in a great 
measure on the extent to which that organ is packed, whether 
any treatment be of the slightest use. 
I have examined horses that have died of rupture of the 
stomach, and found upwards of forty pounds of food in that 
organ ; the ingesta was nearly dry, and had no appearance of 
having been acted upon in the slightest degree by the gastric 
juice; that secretion must have been entirely suspended, as well 
as the movement of the stomach, by the excessive weight of its 
contents. Medical treatment in cases of this sort must, I fear, 
ever prove futile in the horse ; but fortunately, they are not all so 
bad, and plenty of cases will be met with where the stomach is 
overloaded, but only to such a degree that active treatment is 
often efficacious. In such cases, the object to be aimed at is the 
expulsion of the contents of the stomach; and the most natural 
