VN April 2021

Vetnuus | April 2021 34 Could this animal be alive? The sight of the emaciated skeleton of a horse that met my eyes as I peered over the stable door that Monday and the sour smell floating up to my nostrils, caused my stomach to twist into a knot. The unfortunate mare stood in the twilight of the borrowed stable and I could just make out her pathetic appearance. Her back was arched and her tail constantly lifted as she periodically let out a stream of green water from her anus. The walls were painted with green stripes where previous bursts of diarrhoea had run down after being squirted out with force. What you could see of her eyes under the drooping lids were totally dull, almost invisible because her head was drooping so low. Her belly was so tucked up as to have almost vanished behind her gaunt rib cage. Pools of foul-smelling green fluid showed through the sparse soiled straw that tried to cover them on the floor. Eddie Le Riche, our assistant director (AD), had asked me to look at her a few days before. Eddie owned a few thoroughbreds, which he raced. They were spread about in borrowed stables and were unlikely to set the racing world alight. But they were certainly the light of Eddie’s eyes. He had been offered this, once promising thoroughbred, who had won a few races, as a “gift” by the owner, who was totally at his wits end with her and Eddie had accepted, with a twinkle in his eye, believing he would get me to fix her. Her history read something like the woman in the bible that had been bleeding for twelve years. “She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse”. The various colleagues who had treated her were unnamed so I could not get an exact history and so had to guess what previous treatments had been given her. All the info I could get was that she had developed diarrhoea some months before and not responded to any treatment. After the depressing examination I took some specimens and was soon examining a wet smear of the faeces back at the lab. There they were, lots of them, little protozoal critters swimming around with their characteristic flagellae. I had been reading a chapter in the text book “Equine Medicine and Surgery” which was supposed to be the Rolls Royce on Equine practice at that time. It had a chapter called“Protozoal diarrhoea” and this case fitted the description perfectly. In the next few days I acquired the appropriate protozoacide and started the prescribed treatment. Most disappointingly however, as time passed there was no or very little improvement. Meanwhile I was reading widely in whatever journal or text book I could lay hands on and there were many, as our lab had a wonderful library and subscribed to eight different journals (no internet yet). Slowly an idea was coming to me, prompted by one or two things I had picked up. Could the protozoa be a symptom rather than the cause of the condition? Since a horse does a large part of its digestion in the large intestine through the action of a complex intestinal flora in the absence of any digestive juices, rather like the rumen in a ruminant, the protozoa were very likely part of that flora, but because of the diarrhoea and more likely because of the injudicious use of oral antibiotics as a treatment, the flora had become completely distorted and the animal unable to digest its food. Since we had eliminated all the other possible causes like nematodes, I obtained permission from Eddie to try and correct the intestinal flora. Early the next Monday I was at the abattoir in Maitland where they slaughtered some horses a few times a week. There I collected the whole caecumof a freshly slaughtered horse and hastened to the farm where I strained the contents and tubed about 5 - 10 L of the juice into the patient. A few days later I repeated the exercise. After the second tubing there were some encouraging signs, less straining and an occasional formed faecal ball. After repeating the process a third time though, there appeared to be somewhat of a setback. I was still convinced that we should go on and repeated the treatment a few days later, a fourth time. Returning some 10 days later I jumped for joy. After all the work we had put into her treatment, she presented a completely different picture. The faeces was mostly formed though occasionally soft, she had started putting on weight and there was even a shine in her eyes and on her coat. Six weeks later she was a different horse completely. Bright and playful, shining coat and having put on a huge amount of weight. She even went on to win a few races later, as a special thank you for believing in her. Recollections 44: My new life as laboratory vet in Stellenbosch Ian du Toit Story