To counteract intestinal fermentation perhaps no better agent can be got than chloral hydrate, ½ oz. of which may be given by the mouth in water, and ½ oz. more by the rectum.
Wet compresses to the abdomen, or fomentations with water rather hotter than the hand can bear or even the application of mustard is sometimes useful as a soothing or derivative agent.
In the absence of morphia or chloral, laudanum, ether, chloroform, camphor or assafœtida have been recommended.
It is important to keep the patient on a soft, littered floor to prevent injury from his throwing himself down, and walking him around may be resorted to for the same purpose.
Prevention. After a non-fatal attack and in every case in which a horse is found to harbor the sclerostoma equinum in quantity, measures should be taken to expel those present in the bowels and to prevent the entry of embryos. The infested horse may be purged and put on two drachms each of tartar emetic and sulphate of iron every morning in a handful of feed half an hour before the first meal. After six doses he may take a second active purgative. In case of need the addition of 6 grains arsenious acid and a drachm of carbolic acid to each dose will render them much more effective. All water must be withheld that comes from streams running by farm-yards, from ponds or open wells in barn-yards, from uncovered cisterns and from any source which receives drainage or leaching from land occupied by solipeds or spread with their manure.
A course of vermifuge medicine should be given at intervals of two or three months to get rid of the worms which have passed in the interval from the cysts of the colon, into the intestine.
NON-VERMINOUS INTESTINAL CONGESTION IN SOLIPEDS.
Causes: sudden changes to green food, or leguminous fodder, newly harvested fodder, frosted food, iced water, microbian infection, toxin poisoning, intestinal fermentations, experiments, volvulus, invagination, strangulation, compression, atony. Symptoms: as in verminous aneurisms. Diagnosis: absence of worms, presence of other causes. Treatment.
Causes. Acute intestinal congestion apart from verminous aneurisms is ascribed to a variety of causes. Sudden changes of food especially to green food, in spring, or to some of the leguminous fodder plants (alfalfa, cowpea, clover, tares, vetches), newly harvested grain or hay, fodders covered with hoarfrost, iced water, and microbian infection or poisoning with toxins or other irritant products of intestinal fermentations. Experimentally the injection into the circulation of pyogenic toxins and putrid matters has determined intestinal congestion and hemorrhage. In the same way musty hay or grain have proved the occasion of these attacks. Finally mechanical blocking of the circulation of the intestine as by volvulus, invagination, strangulated hernia, or even compression by bulky food has seemed to operate in this way.
It ought to be borne in mind that the habitual microbes of the healthy bowel may become pathogenic when brought in contact with a mucosa which is the seat of irritation, atony or any condition of debility.