Cattle 1853 - Lewis Family Farm

CHAPTER XIV.
THE ANATOMY AND DISEASES OP THE INTESTINES.
In cattle, the enormous development of the rumen, occupying
nearly three-fourths of the abdominal cavity, leaves but little room
for bulky intestines ; the bowels are therefore diminished in size, in
order that they may be mort rapidly packed wherever room can be
found for them.
The larger intestines, particularly the colon and caecum, have
no cellated structure, and, consequently, the food will pass through
them with great rapidity. Lest this, however, should prevent the
abstraction of all the nutriment which it contains, and thus interfere
•with the destiny of cattle—the furnishing of the human being with
food while they are living and after they are dead—the intestinal
canal is greatly prolonged. The intestines of cattle are twenty-two
times as long as his body.
It will be remarked (g, p. 291, and fig. 1, on next page,) that the
duodenum is, at its commencement from the stomach, little larger
than the jejunum and ileum, which are prolongations from it. In
consequence of the maceration of the food in the rumen, the double
mastication, and the mechanism of the manyplus, by means of which
every fibrous particle is seized and ground down, the food is nearly
dissolved before it enters the fourth stomach ; it is easily completed
there, ^,nd the duodenum has nothing to do of this nature. On this
account, the duodenum of cattle is little larger than the small intes-
tines which succeed to it.
The duodenum and all the intestines have, like the stomachs,
three coats. The outer one is the peritoneum, or the membrane by
which all the contents of the belly are invested ; by which also they
are all confined in their natural situations, and by the smoothness
and moisture of which, all injurious friction and concussions are
avoided. The second is the muscular coat, supplied by the motor
organic nerves, and by means of the contraction of which the food is
propelled along the intestinal canal -in the process of healthy digestion,
or hastened when those muscles are made to contract more
rapidly and violently under the influence of irritation, whether refer-