in a healthy condition or, failing in this, milk should be had
from another mare or from a cow.

GASTROENTERITIS.

This condition consists in an inflammation of the stomach and
intestines. Instead of being confined to the mucous, or lining,
membrane, as in gastrointestinal catarrh, the inflammatory process
extends deeper and may even involve the entire thickness of the wall of
the organ.

This disease may be caused by irritant feed, hot drinks, sudden
chilling, moldy or decayed feeds, foul water, parasites, or by chemical
poisons. It may also complicate some general diseases, especially
infectious diseases, as anthrax, influenza, rabies, or petechial fever.
Long-continued obstruction of the bowels or displacement resulting in
death are preceded by enteritis.

_Symptoms._--The symptoms differ somewhat with the cause and depend
also, to some extent, upon the chief location of the inflammation. In
general the animal stops eating or eats but little; it shows colicky
pain; fever develops; the pulse and respiration become rapid; the mucous
membrane becomes red; the mouth is hot and dry. Pressure upon the
abdomen may cause pain. Intestinal sounds can not be heard at the flank.
There is constipation in the earlier stages that is, followed later by
diarrhea. The extremities become cold. Sometimes the feces are coated
with or contain shreds of fibrin, looking like scraps of dead membrane,
and they have an evil, putrid odor. If the disease is caused by moldy or
damaged feed there may be great muscular weakness, with partial
paralysis of the throat, as shown by inability to swallow. If chemical
poisons are the cause, this fact may be shown by the sudden onset of the
disease, the history of the administration of a poison or the entire
absence of known cause, the rapid development of threatening symptoms,
the involvement of a series of animals in the absence of a contagious
disease, and the special symptoms and alterations known to be produced
by certain poisons. To make this chain of evidence complete, the poison
may be discovered in the organs of the horse by chemical analysis. In
nearly all cases of gastro-enteritis there is nervous depression.

The poisons that are most irritant to the digestive tract are arsenic,
corrosive sublimate, sugar of lead, sulphate of copper, sulphate or
chlorid of zinc, lye, or other strong alkalies, mineral acids, and,
among the vegetable poisons, tobacco, lobelia, and water hemlock.

_Treatm