An inquiry into the reasons why the horse rarely vomits / by Joseph Sampson Gamgee.

  • Gamgee, Sampson, 1828-1886.
Date:
[1852]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the reasons why the horse rarely vomits / by Joseph Sampson Gamgee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    12/20 (page 10)
    system of determining the functions of living parts, from the results of observations on dead ones.^ Admitting the possibility of extreme distension of the horse's sto- mach, we deny that it in any degree has a mechanical tendency to open the cardia during life. Let any one look at a horse's small sto- mach, placed beside the enormous quantity of food that animal is capable of devouring in a short time, and he will be forced to believe that, in perfect health, the organ is susceptible of great dilatation, without either involving opening of the cardia, or impairment of its vital power of contraction. To argue that because one part of a hollow viscus is dilated, the other must be so likewise, is in opposition to known facts. Moreover, my own experiments on dead horses' sto- machs, have shown me that not always is extreme distension of the viscus with water followed by escape of the fluid through the cardia; it is or is not, according to the presence or absence of mechanical ob- structions. The opening of the cardia, no less than its closure, is, in the living animal, doubtlessly owing to vital contraction of muscular fibres. The reporters found their third proposition on the general truth that extreme dilatation of a hollow muscle is attended with imi:)airment of its contractile property; thus they make the third a necessary sequence of the first proposition. Since we have impugned the latter, the former, in our opinion, falls to the ground. In asserting that before a horse can vomit, the muscular coat of the stomach must be paralysed, Mignon, in main part, re-echoed the theory of Renault, who several years previously had announced, that not only was the muscular action of the stomach useless, but opposed to vomiting, which only occurred when that viscus became excessively distended.^ My own experiments, conducted for the purpose of ascertaining the efiect of injecting a solu- tion of tartar emetic into the veins of the horse, force me to look on those of M. Renault with great doubt; for I have yet to learn that an experimenter has the power of exciting at will efforts to vomit in the horse; and what I have seen leads me strongly to suspect, that when after injecting tartar emetic into the veins of a horse, and cutting open the abdomen, observers have indulged in the belief that they were witnessing efforts to vomit, they have only witnessed the violent efibrts made by tortured brutes in self-defence. The theory advocated by Renault and Mignon, is, as the latter ad- mits, founded on the doctrine first promulgated by Bayle and Chirac, and of late rendered notorious by the singular experiments with which M. Magendie defended it. The French hippiatrists, in fact, having exclusively studied the mechanical part of the act of vomiting, were forced to decide between the opposite doctrines, defended by Haller and Magendie, as to the participation of the stomach in the perform- ance of that act. The result has been, the declaration of their adhesion ' On a selon nous grand tort de conclure du resultat d'experiences d'amphi- theatres trop souvent imparfaites et sur des orgaues morts, a ce qui doit se passer au milieu des parties que la vie anime. Ne scrait ce pas uue pretention trop etrange, que vouloir sm-jirendre, a I'aide de moyens si grossiers, si limites, si incom- plets, si materiels, le seci'et de ces plienomenes si insaisissables, si changeants et surtout si merveilleux de simplicite, qui se produiseut au sein de toute organisa- tion vivante! (Mignon's Report, loc. cit., p. 1!)7.) 3 Bulletin Soc. Centr. de Med. Veter., tome ii, p. 918, 219.