| Calomel | Half a drachm. |
| Opium | One drachm. |
But stop all the other medicine as soon as the subsidence of the symptoms will permit. The food is now of all importance: bran, in enteritis, is positive poison; mashes are not to be thought of; linseed is too feeding for an inflammatory subject. The same objection may be taken to gruel; hay tea, or pails of boiling water poured upon a pound of flour, must sustain the body for the first day after recovery; on the next day, a feed of boiled roots may be introduced, but not the whole quantity at once; that must be divided into three meals. Then the amount may be doubled, and thus the full bulk of provender be by degrees attained; afterward a few crushed and scalded oats may be mixed with the rest at each meal; but it should be some time before hay is permitted to irritate and distend the lately inflamed surfaces.
Enteritis is a fearful disorder; he who has witnessed one death by that terrible malady should have received an awful rebuke. The post-mortem examination best describes the violence of the affection. The intestines, generally the large intestines, are black and swollen; often in color they approach to a green. Their structure is destroyed; they tear upon a touch, and are so loaded with inflamed blood that one division of the bowels may form no inconsiderable burden for a strong man.
The above directions, the intelligent reader will fully comprehend, are not pronounced in any absolute sense. No two cases of any violent disorder are precisely similar; the forms, therefore, prescribed in these pages admit of variations. They are given only as suited to the generality of attacks; they may be lessened or augmented, as circumstances demand or as discretion dictates. It would be as easy to make a shoe which should fit all feet, as to name medicines or point out the quantities which should be adapted to all maladies.
ACUTE DYSENTERY.
Diarrhœa may be banished from the list of diseases to which horse-flesh is liable. Certain animals will purge during work; others will scour upon the smallest change of diet; such peculiarities, however, mostly check themselves; they demand very slight or no remedial treatment. Unlike diarrhœa in the human subject, they never terminate in death; but dysentery is as violent as diarrhœa is mild. The length and size of the intestines render any disease within them a very serious affair. There are two kinds of dysentery, the acute and the chronic; the acute form of disease will constitute the subject of the present article.
The cause of acute dysentery is always some acrid substance taken into the stomach—generally aloes, combined with some preparation of croton; other substances will, however, induce an inflammatory purgation. Such a result may ensue upon the injudicious use of arsenic, corrosive sublimate, tartar emetic, blue-stone, etc. etc. Many of these substances will be eaten if mixed with the corn—the instinct which protects the lives of other animals being destroyed in the horse by ages of domestication. Others may be ignorantly administered with the very best of intention.
The symptoms often are obscure at the commencement; there is abdominal pain; so there is in most intestinal disorders. The agony may readily be mistaken for the pangs attendant on spasmodic colic. On other occasions, the suffering may be slight, not even sufficient at first to destroy the appetite. No poison acts upon two bodies in precisely the same manner; violent purgation is generally the first marked sign which makes known the nature of the disorder. The feces soon become mere discolored water; the thirst is then excessive; the stench is most offensive; the pulse, from being hard, shortly becomes thick and feeble, and ultimately it is intermittent; the countenance is haggard; the position of the body expresses abdominal pain. Perspirations break forth in patches; tympanitis starts up, and death speedily ensues.