A contribution to comparative pathology : being a further inquiry into the reasons why the horse rarely vomits / by Joseph Sampson Gamgee.

Sampson Gamgee

Date:: 1857

Credit: A contribution to comparative pathology : being a further 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.

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$obstacle to yomiting in the horse is purely mechanical, and principally idue to the insuperable impediment offered to reg'urgitant gastric evacuation by the large and numerous folds into which the lining of the stomach is thrown, when-; ever the distended viscus is compressed. The thick . mus- cular coat was held to act as an auxiliary impedimerit^'^y, preventing the expansion' of^ the larger '^ndj thicker internal lining. ■' , , ' , For the purpose of brevity and cleai^ness T . have' riot; gone into some of the details reported by the experimentei-s!, par- ticularly as I see no reason for entering into a minute analj^sis of the steps of their inquiry, fallacious as it is in its| spirit and foundation. Many as are the reflections sug- gested by the numerous controversies to which the th^irie of our inquiry has led during the last isb yea:rsVriohe is so curious as that which inspires surprise at seeing so many men, habituated to observation and experiment, directly con- tradicting each other in the simplest matters of fact, and making use of arguments so partial and exclusive, as to be destitute even of a priori value in the explanation of vital phenomena, and to admit of complete refutation by compre- hensive observation and logical interpretatiohy,of pTiysical laws and vital conditions. , - ;),,, .,, ...rr ,1 < The fact that therapeutic^, as applied, to the'hofse^^ elude emetics, that the great majority of experimenters have agreed upon the inoperativeness of emetic substances even when injected into that animal's veins, did not for an instant suggest to Ercolani and Vella that the horse is really very much less susceptible to the nei'vou^ impres- sion of emetics than the animals which vomit, and that whatever its physical inability to the performance of that act, that was as a rule secondary to the vital insusceptibility. On the contrary, so soon as they believed that they had finally excited in the horse efforts to vomit, under tlie most extraordinary circumstances, and by the most powerful means, they thus argued: the horse is susceptible of the nervous impression of emetics, the horse does not vomit, therefore the obstacle must be mechanical. How certainly and completely does an assumption contrary to fact lead to error. To state as a general proposition that the horsfe is susceptible of the nervous impression of emetics, is to enun- ciate an assumption contrary to fact. To argue on that fallacious assumption as if it were a demonstrated truth, must lead to error. It is remarkable that it did not occur \o the Turinese physiologists that the very fact of the cuticular coat at the cardiac end of the stomach benig,very loose and$