GOVERNOR STANFORD
THE HOME OF
SUNOL, ARION, PALO ALTO, &c.
After presenting proper credentials and exhibiting the list of prominent stock owners using the Remedies, Mr. Reynolds, the superintendent, and Mr. Marvin, the trainer, consented to his treating Sunol (later owned by Robert Bonner, Esq.,) and Palo Alto for lameness.
After thoroughly testing the Remedies on these and other cases, Mr. Stanford’s Business Manager and Attorney, Mr. Lathrop, placed an order for Humphreys’ Veterinary Remedies, probably the largest ever given for Veterinary Medicines alone.
CHAPTER III.—Part II.
DISEASES OF THE ORGANS OF DIGESTION
Rumination
Oxen and sheep belong to the class of animals known as Ruminants, which feed principally on the leaves and stalks of plants. The quantity of food which they take at a time is very considerable; with a powerful prehensile tongue, they rapidly gather up into their mouths thick and long tufts of grass, which are only slightly masticated, and immediately swallowed. Four stomachs—so called, although the fourth stomach is the true stomach, and the other three are appendages of the œsophagus—are employed in the process of digestion. The first—the paunch, or rumen—is by far the larger of the four, occupying three-fourths of the abdominal cavity. Its mucous membrane is rough with papillæ or eminences, and protected with a dense scaly epithelium. The second is called the recticulum, or honey-comb bag, because the lining mucous membrane is so disposed in folds as to form hexagonal spaces; within these spaces the tubes of the glands may be seen. This bag is the smallest of the digestive organs, is connected with the anterior part of the paunch, with which it communicates freely, and to which, indeed, it may be regarded as dependent. The third cavity is the manyplies, maniplus or omasum; the first name being given on account of the many plies or folds formed by the mucous membrane. These folds are of unequal breadth, the principal ones being separated by others, which gradually diminish in size. The surface is covered with papillæ, the folds being flattened at the sides and somewhat pointed at the fore edges, forming ridges and furrows. The contents of the manyplies are always dry; the food sometimes becomes compressed into thin cakes between the folds, and the epithelium manifests a tendency to peel off in shreds and adhere to the pulpy mass of food. The fourth cavity—the abomasum or rennet—is the true stomach, discharging the same functions as the stomachs of those animals that have only one such organ. It is considerably larger than either the second or third stomach, although less than the first; is lined with a thick villous coat, which is contracted into ridges and furrows, somewhat like the omasum, and secretes an acid, solvent juice, essential to the process of chymification. The act of rumination calls into exercise the first three organs. The crushed food passes from the œsophagus to the rumen; there it remains for some time, subject to the action of heat, saliva, mucous and the secretion of the organ. The tougher the food the longer it is retained. From the rumen the food passes to the recticulum, where the operation of maceration, commenced in the first stomach, is continued, the operation being facilitated by a slow, churning movement characteristic of both organs. The recticulum also appears to be the special receptacle of the fluid that is swallowed, for this at once passes into it, without going into the first stomach. The precise nature of the action of the secretions is uncertain. It is supposed to be a fermentation; no doubt at all times a certain proportion of gas is evolved from the food, but excessive fermentation is indicative of disease (Hoove), and of rapid and dangerous chemical change in the contents of the rumen. The pulpy mass, to which the food has been reduced by the chemical change and churning movement of the first two digestive cavities, is now prepared for thorough mastication by the teeth, and for ultimate solution by the digestive fluids. This mastication is rumination, or “chewing the cud.” The return of the food to the mouth for this operation is effected by the churning movement and by the contraction of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles, which press upward against the rumen and recticulum. The act of regurgitation is very evident to an observer, who sees a large mass ascend from the paunch and distend the œsophagus with an eructating noise. At the moment that a mass of the food passes into the mouth, the accompanying liquid is swallowed into the first of the three stomachs, leaving the solid portion to be slowly ground by the teeth. The length of time thus taken varies with the toughness of the food. Young and very old animals take longer to chew the cud than healthy adults. When the food has been sufficiently comminuted it is again swallowed, some of it into the first two stomachs; but, by a peculiar mechanism of muscular contraction; the passage into the first is so closed that the greater portion of it passes through the opening into the third stomach, from which it goes into the abomasum. The function of the omasum appears to be to regulate the descent of food into the abomasum, though some means of assimilation may take place between its many plies. The last stomach, as already stated, completes the process of digestion.
Loss of the Cud
This is a mere symptom which accompanies many diseases, and even morbid conditions, which scarcely deserve the name of disease, and will yield with the removal of the ailment of which it is a mere symptom. Sometimes it may be present when nothing else is sufficiently tangible to warrant treatment, or it may continue after the disease otherwise seems to have been removed.