As a digestive tonic the following is good: Glauber's salt, 2 pounds; common salt, 1 pound; baking soda, one-half pound. Of this a heaping tablespoonful may be given in each feed. If diarrhea exists, the treatment advised below may be used.
Diarrhea is due to indigestion or intestinal catarrh or to irritation of the bowels from eating moldy or musty feed, drinking stagnant water, diseased condition of the teeth, eating irritating substances, to being kept on low, marshy pastures, and to exposure during cold nights, or in low, damp stables. Some horses are predisposed to scour and are called "washy" by horsemen; they are those with long bodies, long legs, and narrow, flat sides. Horses of this build are almost sure to scour if fed or watered immediately before being put to work. Fast or road work, of course, aggravates this trouble. Diarrhea may exist as a complication of other diseases, as pneumonia and influenza, for instance, and again during the diseases of the liver.
The symptoms are the frequent evacuations of liquid stools, with or without pronounced abdominal pain, loss of appetite, emaciation, etc.
_Treatment_ is at times very simple, but requires the utmost care and judgment. If due to faulty feed or water it is sufficient to change these. If it results from some irritant in the intestines this is best gotten rid of by the administration of an oleaginous purge, for which nothing is better than castor oil, although raw linseed oil may be used if the case is not severe. The diarrhea often disappears with the cessation of the operation of the medicine. If, however, purging continues it may be checked by giving wheat flour in water, starch water, white-oak bark tea, chalk, opium, or half-dram doses of sulphuric acid in one-half pint of water twice or thrice daily. Good results follow the use of powdered opium 2 drams and subnitrate of bismuth 1 ounce, repeated three times a day. In all cases it should be remembered to look to the water and feed the horse is receiving. If either of these is at fault it is at once to be discontinued. We should feed sparingly of good, easily digested feeds. With that peculiar build of nervous horses that scour on the road but little can be done as a rule. They should be watered and fed as long as possible before going on a drive. If there is much flatulency accompanying diarrhea baking soda or other alkaline medicines may effect a cure, while if the discharges have a very disagreeable odor it may be corrected by 1 ounce of sulphite of soda or dram doses of creolin in water, repeated twice a day. Be slow to resort to either the vegetable or mineral astringents, since the majority of cases will yield to change of feed and water or the administration of oils. Afterwards feed upon wheat-flour gruel or other light feeds. The body should be warmly clothed.