CONSTIPATION, OR STRETCHES.
By these terms are implied a preternatural or morbid detention and hardening of the excrement; a disease to which all animals are subject, unless proper attention be paid to their management. It mostly arises from want of exercise, feeding on frosted oats, indigestible matter of every kind, impure water, &c. Costiveness is often the case of flatulent and spasmodic colic, and often of inflammation of the bowels.
Mr. Morrill says, "I have always found that the quantity of medicine necessary to act as an opiate on this dry mass [alluding to that found in the manyplus and intestines] will kill the animal. If I am mistaken, I will take it kindly to be set right." You are quite right.
Let us see what Professor J. A. Gallup says, in his Institutes of Medicine, vol. ii. p. 187. "The practice of giving opiates to mitigate pain, &c., is greatly to be deprecated; it is not only unjustifiable, but should be esteemed unpardonable. It is probable that, for forty years past, opium and its preparations have done seven times the injury that they have rendered benefit"—killed seven where they have saved one! Page 298, he calls opium the "most destructive of all narcotics," and wishes he could "speak through a lengthened trumpet, that he might tingle the ears" of those who use and prescribe it. All the opiates used by the allopathists contain more or less of this poisonous drug. Opiates given with a view of softening mass alluded to will certainly disappoint those who administer them; for, under the use of such "palliatives," the digestive powers fail, and a general state of feebleness and inactivity ensues, which exhausts the vital energies.
It will be found in stretches, that other organs, as well as the "manyplus," are not performing their part in the business of physiological or healthy action, and they must be excited to perform their work; for example, if the food remains in either of the stomachs in the form of a hard mass, then the surface of the body is evaporating too much moisture from the general system; the skin should be better toned. Pure air is one of the best and most valuable of nature's tonics. Let the flock have pure air to breathe, and sufficient room to use their limbs, with proper diet, and there will be little occasion for medicine.
Treatment.—The disease is to be obviated by proper attention to diet, exercise, and ventilation; and when these fail, to have recourse to bitter laxatives, injections, and aperients. The use of salts and castor oil creates a necessity for their repetition, for they overwork the mucous surfaces, and their delicate vessels lose their natural sensibility, and become torpid. Scalded shorts are exceedingly valuable in this complaint, as also are boiled carrots, parsnips, &c.
The derangement must be treated according to its indications, thus:—
Suppose the digestive organs to be deranged, and rumination to have ceased; then take a tea-spoonful of extract of butternut, and dissolve it in a pint of thoroughwort tea, and give it at a dose. Use an injection of soap-suds, if necessary.
Suppose the excrement to be hard, coated with slime, and there be danger of inflammation in the mucous surfaces; then give a wine-glass of linseed oil,[18] to which add a raw egg.
It is scarcely ever necessary to repeat the dose, provided the animal is allowed a few scalded shorts.
If the liver is supposed to be inactive, give, daily, a tea-spoonful of golden seal in the food.
If the animal void worms with the fæces, then give a tea made from cedar boughs, or buds, to which add a small quantity of salt.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Olive oil will answer the same purpose.