Cattle 1853 - Lewis Family Farm

350 CATTLE.
rubbed in. In very bad cases, but not until other remedies have
been applied, it will be useful to bleed. Warm mashes, warm gruel,
and good old hay, should constitute the food of the beast for some
time afterwards.
A more prevalent species of colic, is the spasmodic. It is spasm,
or contraction of a portion or portions of the small intestines, and
accompanied by more excruciating pain than the former. The animal
is exceedingly uneasy, lowing, pawing, striking at his belly with
his hind legs or his horns ; continually lying down and getting up,
becoming very irritable, and sometimes being dangerous to handle.
It is distinguished from flatulent colic by the smaller quantity of gas
that is expelled, the comparative absence of tension or enlargement
of the belly, the more evident spasms relaxing for a little while, and
then returning with increased violence, and the freedom with which
the animal moves during the remissions."
The feeding on acrid plants, or even on healthy food too great in
quantity or too nutritive, the commencement of feeding on grains, exposure
to cold after work, the drinking of too cold water, and espe-
cially after exercise, or of water impregnated with metallic salts, are
occasional causes. More dangerous ones are the long continuance of
purging, and also th% long continuance of costiveness. The treatment
will be the same, except that as this proceeds from irritation in
the intestinal canal generally, or in particular portions of it, which is
apt to run on to inflammation, bleeding will be earlier resorted to
and the practitioner will not suffer the first symptom of inflamma-
tion to appear, without adopting the best method of subduing it.
After every case of colic, whether flatulent or spasmodic, the animal
will require some attention and nursing, for in both of them the in-
testines are considerably weakened and predisposed to a repetition of
the attack, and there are few maladies, the habit of the recurrence
of which is so soon formed.
Homoeopathic treatment.—The curative means are aconiiwm (one
or two doses), and then arsenicum (three or four doses). If these
remedies diminish the sufferings a little, but the constipation still
continues, nuas vomica is given, when the fsecal evacuations are in
small hard lumps ; opium, when they are blackish", as if burned, and
when it becomes necessary to extract them from the rectum with the
hand ; plumbum in the most obstinate cases, where the rectum is
empty. We may also try carbo vegetabilis and colocynthis. Consult
the articles Diarrhoea and Distension of the Rumen by Gas, for these
two symptoms are sometimes associated in colic.
STRANGULATION OF THE INTESTINES.
Spasmodic colic, if neglected, or bidding defiance to medical treatment,
occasionally leads to such an entanglement of different parts of
;