Cattle 1853 - Lewis Family Farm

354 CATTLE.
among the intestines, some alarming symptoms will occasionally
supervene. The belly will swell, and sometimes to a considerable
extent. Fomentations and, if necessary, scarifications may be resorted
to. There may be manifest symptoms of fever, as shiverings, heaving
at the flanks, and cessation of rumination. Blood should then
be abstracted, according to the state of the patient ; half-pound
doses of Epsom salts should be given morning and night, until the
bowels are moderately opened, and the beast should have little be-
sides mashes and gruel, and should be kept as quiet as possible.
INTROSU8CEPTION OF THE BOWELS.
This is another fatal consequence of colic. While certain portions
of the ileum or jejunum generally, but occasionally of the larger
bowels, are distended by gas, other parts are spasmodically contracted,
and then, by the increased peristaltic motion which is going on, the
collapsed part of the superior or anterior intestine slides, or is forced
down, into the distended part behind ; or, by that inverted action
which takes place in the intestine commotion of colic, a contracted
portion of the bowel slides or is forced into the distended part before,
and thus one intestine is strangely contained -within another, and
that occasionally reaching to a considerable extent. The mesentery
is usually torn in this unnatural procedure, for otherwise that too
must be taken up or carried down into the distended intestine above
or below.
It will be easily conceived that this will inflict great torture on the
beast, and an examination after death will sufficiently prove the«intensity
of the suffering ; for there will be much inflammation, and
generally gangrene of the involved part ; and sometimes of both portions
of the intestine. The symptoms by which the practitioner may
be induced to suspect, or may know, that colic has run on to introsusception,
are not yet determined. Increase of pain, attended by
obstinate constipation, rapid prostration of strength, and compara-
tively little fever, may be obscure indications. It is evident that this
case must be beyond the reach of medical skill.
INVERSION OF THE RECTUM.
It has occasionally happened in thestraining of diarrhoea, and in
the still more violent efforts with which the faeces are expelled in
dysentery, that a portion of the rectum is protruded from the anus ;
the sphincter muscle of the anus then contracts violently upon it,
and no effort of the animal can draw it back, nor will it readily yield
to any external force employed. The blood is necessarily congested
in the protruded intestine, from the situation of the part ; the gut is
intensely red, and it gradually becomes livid, black, gangrenous.
The animal all the while is making frequent and violent efforts, during
which small quantities of excrement, or mucus, or blood, or gas, are