Little by little peristalsis returns, becomes regular, and the chronic tympanites disappears for good. This is frequently the case during gestation, when the condition simply consists in motor dyspepsia without anæmia.
(b) If, on the contrary, chronic tympanites is accompanied by constipation, and the fæces are hard or, as is usually the case, covered with mucus, suggesting the probability of excess of hydrochloric acid, salines are indicated—not to the point of producing purgation, which would not lead to any lasting improvement, but still as laxatives, continued daily for ten, fifteen, or twenty days, or, if necessary, even longer.
Carlsbad salts in doses of 8 to 10 drams, or one-ounce doses of sulphate of sodium associated with 2½ drams of bicarbonate of potash after each meal, are to be recommended in preference to bicarbonate of soda alone, because they act on the secretions, on the muscular system, and also on the liver.
(c) Finally, when chronic tympanites is accompanied by diarrhœa, a condition which usually indicates insufficient secretion of hydrochloric acid, the administration of that acid tends to arrest or check organic fermentation and to facilitate digestion in the abomasum by supplementing the diminished physiological secretion. The dosage is an important point. At first small quantities should be given, 2½ drams per day, divided into two doses and freely diluted in the drinking water; but this amount may, if necessary, afterwards be doubled or trebled. The drinking water is not rendered irritant by these doses, for it is admitted, and Moussu has confirmed the fact by analysis, that the quantity of HCl in the gastric juice may rise as high as ·2 to ·3 per cent. Chloride of sodium, the excito-secretory action of which on the gastric mucous membrane is well known, may be given for long periods in doses of 1 to 1½ ounces per day.
In these various chemico-pathological states the food should receive the closest attention. The forage, which should be good, may be supplemented by the addition of cooked roots, demulcent drinks, and, if possible, milk.
GASTRIC DISTURBANCE DUE TO FOREIGN BODIES.
These morbid conditions are extremely complex, but the facts that they are due only to one cause, and that they possess certain symptoms in common, permit of a certain grouping. It would obviously be illogical to speak of traumatic indigestion of the rumen, reticulum, and abomasum, as has been done in more than one book on this subject; for the gastric disturbances described below should be considered as complications, and not as diseases.
Causation. In young animals foreign bodies may be composed of hairs, wool, bristles, cotton, and clover hairs.
Hair balls are common in the rumen, and are sometimes met with in the fourth stomach. They cause irritation, indigestion, sometimes pyloric obstruction, dilatation, and eventually death.
Wool balls in lambs, bristle balls in young pigs, cause much gastric irritation. Cotton balls occur in lambs fed on cotton-seed cake; the fibre constitutes a foreign body. The hairs of clover leaves may form a ball in the abomasum of lambs.