The application of the hand to the side of the chest behind the left elbow may detect a strong impulse of the heart with each beat. If the patient is actively exercised for some time this may be felt on the right side as well. This symptom indicates the existence of dilatation of the right cavities of the heart.
The symptoms of indigestion are also very manifest. The dung passed is like so much chopped hay and oats, and does not at all resemble the fæces of a healthy horse. The abdomen is tumid, tense and filled with flatus, which is frequently passed per-ano, and has no doubt given rise to the name of broken wind. This expulsion of gas from the rectum usually takes place whenever the animal is excited to cough. When first started on a journey, the frequent passage of wind and dung for the first mile or two is one of the most disagreeable features of the disease. When the animal has thus emptied himself he usually goes much better for the remainder of the journey.
Broken-winded horses are always greedy feeders, and if they get little work they manage to maintain their flesh. But they are soft and flabby, and if put to active work they fall off rapidly, becoming emaciated and hidebound, a true indication of their impaired digestion.
The symptoms are liable to occasional aggravation. If the stomach and bowels are overloaded they are invariably so. If the patient is kept in a hot, close stable, the same result follows. Thick, muggy weather has the same effect. After a more than usually severe day’s work all the symptoms may be intensified, and this may continue for several days or a week. Bouley attributes this to an extensive rupture of air cells and a sudden increase of emphysema, and the gradual subsidence of the symptoms to the partial absorption of the displaced air and the accommodation of the lung to its new condition.
Light and laxative diet on the other hand alleviates the symptoms and a broken winded horse usually improves at grass.
Course. The general tendency of broken wind is to persistent aggravation, but by a judicious regimen many cases may be checked in their progress and greatly relieved, or even cured.
Treatment. We have already seen that broken wind is virtually unknown on natural pastures where the grass is short, green and succulent. Turning out on such pastures will improve or even temporarily cure mild cases. The same may be said of the laxative systems of diet. (See that recommended for chronic bronchitis). Feeding on dry grain only, with a very limited supply of water, will enable many broken winded horses to do ordinary work with comparative ease and comfort. In such cases, however, improvement is only due to the empty and unclogged condition of the digestive organs and the symptoms return with all their former intensity when the original diet is restored. By way of palliation much may be secured by avoiding accidental causes of aggravation. If catarrh or bronchitis has supervened it should be treated in the ordinary way. If the stomach and bowels are overloaded and costive, a small dose of aloes and enemata will relieve. If the stable is close a free admission of air will be beneficial. The temporary excitement in these cases may be further alleviated by sedatives, of which opium and digitalis have been mostly employed. The last agent will sometimes control the breathing to such an extent that the horse may be thought to have completely recovered. Professor Dick believed that he had effected a cure in one case by the administration at a single dose of a drachm each of camphor, opium, calomel and digitalis. Temporary results only can, however, be expected from such agents, except in the case of an aggravation due to a cause acting for a limited time only, in which case the partial improvement may be lasting.
By adopting such measures to check accidental complications and confining the animal to a rigid system of diet a broken winded horse may be worked with comfort to himself and his master. The aliment should be principally or exclusively of oats, bran or barley, though good succulent grass, turnips, carrots, beet, and potatoes may be allowed, as may also wheat or oat straw in limited quantity, but no hay and above all none prepared from red clover, alfalfa, sainfoin, or allied foreign plants and none that is musty or otherwise injured by keeping. No food nor water must be allowed for one or two hours before going to work, and the pace must be slow at first and gradually increased as the horse empties himself, and the breathing gets less embarrassed. If meadow hay, straw or other bulky food is allowed in small quantity this must be after the horse has returned from his day’s work.
If the food above recommended is boiled or pulped, and mixed with some saccharine agent as molasses its restorative action is enhanced.
If, however, we add to these hygienic and dietetic measures a prolonged course of arsenic, the symptoms generally disappear. From five to fifteen grains of arsenic made into a powder with a drachm of bicarbonate of soda may be given daily in the food until improvement is noticed or symptoms of the poisonous action of the agent appear. When these are manifested in loss of appetite, colicy pains or red and watery eyes the medicine must be suspended and begun again some days later in smaller doses.