4th. In diarrhœa, the excrement is loose, but in other respects natural, without any blood or slime; whereas in dysentery the fæces consist of hard lumps, blood, and slime.
5th. There is not that degree of fetor in the fæces, in diarrhœa, which takes place in dysentery.
6th. In dysentery, the appetite is totally gone; in diarrhœa, it is generally better than usual.
7th. Diarrhœa is not contagious; dysentery is supposed to be highly so.
8th. In dysentery, the animal wastes rapidly; but by diarrhœa, only a temporary stop is put to thriving, after which it makes rapid advances to strength, vigor, and proportion.
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.