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Conversion and Islam in the Early
Modern Mediterranean
The topic of religious conversion into and out of Islam as a historical phe-
nomenon is mired in a sea of debate and misunderstanding. It has often been
viewed as the permanent crossing of not just a religious divide, but in the
context of the early modern Mediterranean also political, cultural and geo-
graphic boundaries. Reading between the lines of a wide variety of sources,
however, suggests that religious conversion between Christianity, Judaism
and Islam often had a more pragmatic and prosaic aspect that constituted a
form of cultural translation and a means of establishing communal belong-
ing through the shared, and often contested articulation of religious identi-
ties. The chapters in this volume do not view religion simply as a specific
set of orthodox beliefs and strict practices to be adopted wholesale by the
religious individual or convert. Rather, they analyse conversion as the acqui-
sition of a set of historically contingent social practices, which facilitated
the process of social, political or religious acculturation. Exploring the role
conversion played in the fabrication of cosmopolitan Mediterranean identi-
ties, the volume examines the idea of the convert as a mediator and transla-
tor between cultures. Drawing upon a diverse range of research areas and
linguistic skills, the volume utilises primary sources in Ottoman, Persian,
Arabic, Latin, German, Hungarian and English within a variety of genres
including religious tracts, diplomatic correspondence, personal memoirs,
apologetics, historical narratives, official documents and commands, legal
texts and court records, and religious polemics. As a result, the collection
provides readers with theoretically informed, new research on the subject
of conversion to or from Islam in the early modern Mediterranean world.
Dynastic Colonialism
Gender, Materiality and the early modern House of Orange-Nassau
Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline van Gent
List of Figuresvii
Contributorsviii
Acknowledgementsxi
Introduction1
CLAIRE NORTON
PART 1
Trans-imperial subjects: geo-political spatialities, political
advancement and conversion7
PART 3
Translating the self: devotion, hybridity and religious
conversion179
The editor
Claire Norton is Reader in History at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.
She works on early modern Ottoman history, particularly instances of cul-
tural transfer and interaction among communities living in border areas
and other liminal spaces. She is interested in the complexities of identity
formation and the role past-focused narratives have in this process, subjects
that are explored in her forthcoming book Plural Pasts: Power, Identity,
and the Ottoman Sieges of Nagykanizsa. She has edited a number of books
including The Renaissance and the Ottoman World (ed. with A. Contadini)
(2013); Nationalism, Historiography and the (Re)Construction of the Past
(2007). She has also written extensively on the theory of history including
Doing History (2011) with Mark Donnelly.
The contributors
Elisabetta Benigni is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Mediterranean Liter-
ature at the University of Turin. Her research explores South European and
Arabic literary and intellectual encounters during the pre-colonial and colo-
nial periods. She was a fellow of the Italian Academy, Columbia University
and of the research programme “Zukunftsphilologie: Revisiting the Canons
of Textual Scholarship”, Freie Universität Berlin. Her publications include
studies on Arabic translations and readings of Dante and Machiavelli in the
nineteenth and twentieth century. She has also published on Italian transla-
tions of The Thousand and One Nights against the backdrop of the Italian
colonial history of Libya. She is currently completing a monograph on mod-
ern Arabic prison literature.
Houssem Eddin Chachia obtained his PhD in 2014 from the University of
Tunis. His thesis was titled “The Sephardim and the Moriscos: The Journey
of expulsion and installation in the Maghreb (1492–1756), stories and itin-
eraries”. He is now a researcher on the “Regions and Resources of Herit-
age in Tunisia” project at the University of Manouba (Tunisia). He mainly
works on minorities in the Mediterranean, particularly the expulsion from
Iberia of the Sephardi Jewish community (Spanish and Portuguese Jews) and
the Moriscos community. He is interested in the processes and complexities
of identity formation and religious conversion.
Giorgio Rota received his PhD from the Istituto Universitario Orientale
(Naples) in 1996. Since 2003, he has been at the Institute for Iranian Stud-
ies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (currently as Senior Researcher).
He also held visiting professorships at the universities of Trieste, Bolo-
gna, Munich and at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris). His
main field of research is the military and political history of Safavid Persia
(1501–1736), with a particular focus on the ghulams, the so-called slave
members of the army and administration who were mostly of Caucasian
origin and often Christians converted to Islam: he has written several arti-
cles on the subject. He is also the author of Under Two Lions: On the
Knowledge of Persia in the Republic of Venice (ca. 1450–1797) and La
Vita e i Tempi di Rostam Khan (edizione e traduzione italiana del Ms. Brit-
ish Library Add 7,655) (both Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften, 2009).
This volume developed from a conference The Lure of the Other: Conver-
sion and Reversion in the Early Modern Mediterranean held at St Mary’s
University, Twickenham in June 2013. I would like to thank everyone who
helped with the organisation of the conference. In particular, I am grateful
to St Mary’s University and the Society for Renaissance Studies for provid-
ing generous grants that supported the event. I would also like to thank all
the participants who gave papers and contributed to the interesting discus-
sions we had both after the individual panels and during the coffee and
lunch breaks – it made the conference a very enjoyable experience. Lastly
my thanks go to the anonymous reader(s) and to the editorial team at Ash-
gate for their support for the volume and for making the publication process
as painless as it can be.
Introduction
Claire Norton
Religious conversion has often been viewed as the permanent crossing of,
not just a religious divide, but in the early modern Mediterranean also polit-
ical, cultural and geographic boundaries. Although conversion is frequently
interpreted in terms of the active spiritual conviction of the convert, the
paradigm of religious conversion as solely engendered by a self-conscious
psychological and spiritual conviction is problematic in such a context as
religious practice was not necessarily viewed as an entity separate from one’s
identity and sense of communal belonging. Reading between the lines of a
wide variety of sources suggests that religious conversion between Chris-
tianity, Judaism and Islam in the early modern Mediterranean often had a
more pragmatic and prosaic aspect in that it constituted a form of cultural
translation and a means of establishing communal belonging through the
shared, and often contested articulation of religious identities.
Following on from some recent ground-breaking work on early mod-
ern conversion the chapters in this volume take an approach to religious
conversion that does not view religion solely as a specific set of orthodox
beliefs and strict practices to be adopted indiscriminatingly by the religious
individual or convert. Instead the chapters in this volume analyse conver-
sion as the acquisition of a set of historically contingent social practices,
which facilitated a process of social, political or religious acculturation
and which did not necessitate a comprehensive relinquishing of previous
identities. Moving beyond the normative cultural, geo-political and reli-
gious divisions that can delineate scholarship of the early modern Medi-
terranean, many of the contributors explore the role conversion played in
the fabrication of cosmopolitan Mediterranean identities and examine the
idea of the convert as a mediator or translator between cultures: a “trans-
imperial subject”.
The chapters in the first section explore the complex, but often flexible,
confessional and communal allegiances and loyalties of Mediterranean-
based trans-imperial subjects. Their crossings of geo-political and religious
boundaries in search of advancement or to escape difficult situations both
reify spatialities of conversion and illustrate networks of interconnected
2 Claire Norton
commercial, familial and diplomatic relationships. Tobias Graf approaches
the early modern Mediterranean as an intersectional, symbiotic space in his
exploration of the workings of Mediterranean cross-border, trans-imperial
networks and the role that converts played in bridging geographical, polit-
ical and religious boundaries. He focuses on the case of Carlo Cigala, a
member of one of Genoa’s oldest noble families and a subject of the King
of Spain, who sought to mobilise his trans-imperial familial connection in
his attempts at social advancement. His brother, Ciğalazade Yusuf Sinan
Paşa, a convert to Islam and high-ranking Ottoman official, in his capac-
ity as admiral of the Ottoman fleet, sought to facilitate the appointment of
Carlo Cigala to the Ottoman sancak of the Duchy of Naxos, demonstrating
the role of converts in mediating and facilitating trans-imperial networks of
patronage.
In contrast, Domagoj Madunić analyses conversion during a time of con-
flict, in this case the seventeenth-century Venetian–Ottoman war for Crete
(1645–1669). Focusing on a number of case studies of conversion from the
Adriatic frontier zone, he argues that, during war, conversion could be a
survival strategy to save one’s life, escape captivity or avoid forced labour in
the galleys. His discussion of the case of Fra Giorgio who converted to Islam
under threat of impalement foregrounds the complexity of early modern
political relationships and the importance of familial networks that tran-
scended religious and communal boundaries. Fra Giorgio’s sister was the
wife of the Pasha of Herzegovina and, as a result of her intercession, a
fetwa was issued annulling his conversion as contrary to Islamic law as it
was made under duress. Madunić’s second example demonstrates that con-
version motivated by self-preservation could also provide opportunities for
personal advancement. Conte Vojin, a Montenegrin chieftain based on the
Adriatic frontier, oscillated in his military and political support for the Vene-
tians or Ottomans depending on how the war was progressing. Conversion
was one of the strategies at his disposal that he employed to gain access to
resources or demonstrate his loyalty. Embracing Catholicism in order to
advance his career in the Venetian army, when captured by the Ottomans in
1649, he converted to Islam, took the name Cafer Ağa and then, as a mem-
ber of the Ottoman military-administrative structure, became a staunch
enemy of the Venetians. Eventually events would catch up with Cafer Ağa
and, having alienated both Christian and Muslim communities along the
frontier, he was killed by a chieftain of one of the competing Montenegrin
clans and his head was delivered to Venice.
Giorgio Rota focuses on conversion in the context of the Safavid Empire.
In particular, he examines the complex interrelationship between Geor-
gian vassal rulers, their Safavid and Ottoman overlords, conversion and
political advancement. He explains how, in the sixteenth century, conver-
sion to or from Shiite or Sunni Islam was employed by members of the
Georgian administrative and military elite as a means of obtaining political
Introduction 3
and military support from the Shah or the Sultan respectively. Among the
various individuals that Rota details, he examines the case of the Georgian
Giorgo Saak’adze whose shifts in political and military allegiance between
Georgia, Safavid Persia and the Ottoman Empire were accompanied by con-
comitant spatial and religious translocations. His moves to avoid enemies
or seek personal advantage entailed his repeated conversion to and from
Christianity and Shiite and Sunni Islam.
Michał Wasiucionek too is interested in the spatial component of conver-
sion. He concentrates on the spatial movements of the boyar elite to and
from the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia that accompa-
nied their religious conversions which were largely motivated by political,
economic or judicial concerns. These cases of Ottoman non-Muslim subjects
(zimmi) who turned Muslim and then turned non-Muslim illustrate an inter-
esting variation in Ottoman cartographies of sovereignty and jurisdictional
control. Although the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldovia
were an integral part of the Islamic Ottoman Empire, Wasiucionek demon-
strates how the boyar elite north of the Danube were able to maintain the
Christian identity of the socio-legal and geographical landscape by exclud-
ing converts from both the socio-political life of the principalities and from
inheriting land or assets despite their generally tolerant and pragmatic view
towards conversion to Islam by their compatriots.
The chapters in the second section explore the ontologically (de)stabilis-
ing affect that the practical integration of converts into an existing religious
community could have on early modern communities as well as the more
abstract threats that conversion could pose. Palmira Brummett is interested
in conversion as a process, one in which identities are layered or interleaved
together and that can ‘be fast or slow; voluntary or coerced; complete or
incomplete; “permanent” chronic, temporary, illusory; “real” or rhetorical’.
She explores the legitimising utility of public conversions or ‘turning’ and
the variety of ways it has been employed to project and reinforce identities.
She illustrates her argument through an analysis of a series of conversion
narratives to and from Islam including that of Philip Dandulo, a “borne
Turk” who converted to Christianity in 1657 and whose story was the sub-
ject of a very popular pamphlet entitled The Baptized Turk, by Thomas
Warmstry D.D.
Houssem Eddine Chachia explores how Iberian Moriscos both before and
after their expulsion from Iberia occupied a liminal space as new converts
and cultural minorities: first as new, Arabic-speaking Christians in Spain
following their forced baptism throughout the sixteenth century and then
in the early seventeenth century as new Spanish-speaking Muslims in the
Maghreb. Reading letters and texts by Moriscos as well as Inquisition docu-
ments, he discusses how they imagined and negotiated identities to either
facilitate their integration into the cultural and religious life of the Maghreb
or to argue for their status as Spanish Christians in Spain.
4 Claire Norton
Rosita D’Amora explores the rhetoric surrounding the ransoming activi-
ties of Christian captives by various Christian religious orders and charita-
ble organisations. In institutional texts, captives’ letters and the narratives
of returned captives, the literary trope of saving Christian souls from the
threat of conversion to Islam and eternal damnation through the provi-
sion of ransoms for captives is prevalent. D’Amora analyses this trope
in a series of paintings, arguing that such images represent an important
visual counterpart to the various written texts on captivity and illustrate
the dangerous ontological implications of conversion to Islam for early
modern audiences.
The third section delineates the self-fashioning undertaken by converts
themselves, and views conversion as a process by which multiple selves are
interpolated and interwoven together rather than the simple substitution of
religious subjectivities. Mulsow and Benigni analyse the hybrid and syncretic
nature of religious conversion and devotional practices in the early modern
Mediterranean and the ways that converts adopted, adapted and translated
the religious traditions in which they participated. Martin Mulsow explores
the self-fashioning of the Protestant, Antitrinitarian Heidelberg minister and
convert to Islam, Adam Neuser, in the context of his recent discovery of
some hitherto unknown papers of Neuser’s in the Gotha Research Library.
Mulsow argues that the Gotha papers essentially constitute fragments of
Neuser’s Apologia: an explanation of both his philosophical arguments and
his actions in converting to Islam. Focusing on the cryptographic marginalia
of the Gotha fragments and the theologian Jacob Palaeologus’ account of
a debate he had with Neuser concerning arguments for the superiority of
Islam outlined in Murad ibn Abdullah’s Guide for one’s turning towards
God Mulsow examines the hybrid persona that Neuser fashioned in Istan-
bul. Here he was both a Muslim loyal to the Ottoman court, and a “Chris-
tian” still in contact with his friends and colleagues in western Europe.
He was a scholar who was not only working on a Latin translation of the
Qur’an, but was seeking to translate both Christian and Islamic doctrine in
order to reconstruct an Islamic Christianity – the perfect synthesis between
both religions.
Elisabetta Benigni also investigates the complex identities fashioned by
a convert to Islam, ʾAbdallāh al-Turjumān (Anselm Turmeda), through his
Arabic and Catalan writings. Turmeda was a fifteenth-century Franciscan
friar and renowned Catalan poet who converted to Islam and moved to
Tunis where he authored a first-person conversion narrative and polemical
treatise on the superiority of Islam entitled Tuḥfat al-Adīb. Like Neuser,
ʾAbdallāh al-Turjumān appears to have been committed to his new faith and
he also retained a complicated relationship with Christianity and his former
Christian identity. Indeed, even after his conversion and move to Tunis, he
continued to author works in Catalan directed at an implied Christian audi-
ence in which he openly recommended belief in the Trinity and the Catholic
Introduction 5
Church. The juxtaposition of his authorship of a polemical text in Arabic
that condemned the concept of the Trinity and criticised the four Gospels
as mendacious with Catalan works promoting the Trinity has led some
scholars to accuse him of duplicity and a lack of sincerity in his religious
beliefs. In contrast, Benigni explores al-Turjumān’s conversion as a process
of self-translation through inclusion in the context of a fluid early modern
Mediterranean world that facilitated the imagination of a “multiplication
of identities”.
Part 1
Trans-imperial subjects
Geo-political spatialities, political
advancement and conversion
1 Trans-imperial nobility
The case of Carlo Cigala
(1556–1631)1
Tobias P. Graf
Introduction
On 15 Rebiülahir in the year 1007 after the Hijra (12 November 1598),
Sultan Mehmed III issued a certificate of appointment (berat) to a certain
‘Carlo Cigala who lives in Messina’. According to the sultan’s orders, the
man was ‘to bring, without delay and hesitation, . . . [his] mother and [to]
go to the . . . Duchy of Naxos and enjoy and govern it in . . . [his] lifetime’.2
Messina, of course, was not part of the sultan’s ‘well-protected domains’, nor
was Cigala one of his subjects. This imperial command, therefore, presents
somewhat of a puzzle. Why would Mehmed III appoint a foreigner – and a
subject of his greatest rival in the Mediterranean, the king of Spain, at that –
to what was nominally a vassal state, yet effectively a sancak of the Otto-
man Empire? Taking Carlo Cigala’s appointment to the Duchy of Naxos
as a starting point, this article examines the links between members of the
Cigala family and the Ottoman Empire. I argue that, at least as far as Carlo
was concerned, Christendom’s “archenemy” had a crucial role to play in
his quest for social advancement. In fact, Carlo aspired to be, and indeed
considered himself to be, part of a trans-imperial nobility.3
To begin, however, it would be prudent to briefly comment on the main
source for Carlo Cigala’s appointment to the Duchy of Naxos since the
quotation from the berat is taken, not from an Ottoman original, but from
an Italian translation preserved in the archives in Venice. At first glance, this
may make the information rather spurious. Yet Joshua White, who has had
the chance to compare a number of copies and translations of Ottoman doc-
uments from this period preserved in Venice to their originals in Istanbul,
has concluded that the Venetian material is generally faithful and therefore
reliable.4 In this particular instance, the genuineness of the sultan’s order is
supported by the close correspondence of the Italian text to Ottoman diplo-
matics which, in fact, makes it possible to classify the command as a berat
in the first place. Phrases such as ‘give faith to my imperial seal’, with which
the body of the document ends, are commonplace elements to authenticate
the document and affirm its validity.5 While this does not preclude the pos-
sibility that the berat kept in Venice is a forgery that is very unlikely, all
the more so since the translation is contained among the dispatches of the
10 Tobias P. Graf
Venetian baili in Istanbul who stood to gain nothing from spreading false
rumour in this case.
there are some who are seeking a decision from the Mufti [the
şeyhülislam] on this point, whether it is lawful to use force to compel
the son of a Turkish woman, born at Castel Nuovo, carried slave into
Christendom, to return to Islam, which is precisely the case of Signor
Carlo Cicalla.
Percentage of CO2.
Buckwheat (Polygonum fagopyrum) 80
Alfalfa (Mendicago Sativa) 70–80
Clover (Trifolium pratense) 70–80
Meadow grass 70–80
Indian corn (Zea Maïs) 70–80
Spurry (Spergula arvensis) 70–80
Hay of alfalfa or clover 70–80
Oats with cut straw 70–80
Yellow Lupin (Lupinus luteus) 60–70
Vetch (Vicia sativa) 60–70
Oats cut green 60–70
Potato tops 60–70
Potatoes 60–70
Meadow hay 60–70
Leaves of beet 50–60
Leaves of radish 50–60
Cabbage 40–50
The marsh gas varied from 16 to 39 per cent., being especially
abundant in cases of abstinence. It should, therefore, be in large
amount in the tympanies which accompany febrile and other chronic
affections. Hydrogen sulphide was found only in traces, recognizable
by blackening paper saturated with acetate of lead. Oxygen and
nitrogen were in small amount and were attributed to air swallowed
with the food. In the work of fermentation the oxygen may be
entirely used up.
Lesions. These are in the main the result of compression of the
different organs, by the overdistended rumen. Rupture of the rumen
is frequent. The abdominal organs are generally bloodless, the liver
and spleen shrunken and pale, though sometimes the seat of
congestion or even hemorrhage. Ecchymoses are common on the
peritoneum. The right heart and lungs are gorged with black blood,
clotted loosely, and reddening on exposure. The right auricle has
been found ruptured. Pleura, pericardium and endocardium are
ecchymotic. The capillary system of the skin, and of the brain and its
membranes, is engorged, with, in some instances, serous
extravasations.
Prevention. This would demand the avoidance or correction of all
those conditions which contribute to tympany. In fevers and
extensive inflammations, when rumination is suspended, the diet
should be restricted in quantity and of materials that are easily
digested (well boiled gruels, bran mashes, pulped roots, etc.,) and all
bulky, fibrous and fermentescible articles must be proscribed. In
weak conditions in which tympany supervenes on every meal, a
careful diet may be supplemented by a course of tonics, carminatives
and antiseptics such as fœungrec oxide of iron, hyposulphite of soda
and common salt, equal parts, nux vomica 2 drs. to every 1 ℔. of the
mixture. Dose 1 oz. daily in the food, or ½ oz. may be given with each
meal.
Musty grain and fodder should be carefully avoided, also
mowburnt hay, an excess of green food to which the stock is
unaccustomed, clover after a moderate shower, or covered with dew
or hoarfrost, frosted beet, turnip, or potato tops, frosted potatoes,
turnips or apples, also ryegrass, millet, corn, vetches, peas with the
seeds fairly matured but not yet fully hardened. When these
conditions cannot be altogether avoided, the objectionable ration
should be allowed only in small amount at one time and in the case
of pasturage the stock should have a fair allowance of grain or other
dry feed just before they are turned out. Another precaution is to
keep the stock constantly in motion so that they can only take in
slowly and in small quantity the wet or otherwise dangerous aliment.
When it becomes necessary to make an extreme transition from
one ration to another, and especially from dry to green food,
measures should be taken to make the change slowly, by giving the
new food in small quantities at intervals, while the major portion of
the diet remains as before, until the fæces indicate that the
superadded aliment has passed through the alimentary canal.
Another method is to mix the dry and green aliments with a daily
increasing allowance of the latter. Some have avoided the morning
dew and danger of fermentation by cutting the ration for each
succeeding day the previous afternoon and keeping it in the interval
under cover.
Treatment. Various simple mechanical resorts are often effective
in dispelling the tympany. Walking the animal around will
sometimes lead to relaxation of the tension of the walls of the
demicanal and even to some restoration of the movements of the
rumen with more or less free eructation of gas. The dashing of a
bucket of cold water on the left side of the abdomen sometimes
produces a similar result. Active rubbing or even kneading of the left
flank will sometimes lead to free belching of gas. The same may be at
times secured by winding a rope several times spirally round the
belly and then twisting it tighter by the aid of a stick in one of its
median turns.
A very simple and efficient resort is to place in the mouth a block
of wood 2½ to 3 inches in diameter and secured by a rope carried
from each end and tied behind the horns or ears. This expedient
which is so effective in preventing or relieving dangerous tympany in
choking appears to act by inducing movements of mastication, and
sympathetic motions of the œsophagus, demicanal and rumen. It not
only determines free discharge of gas by the mouth, but it absolutely
prevents any accession of saliva or air to the stomach by rendering
deglutition difficult or impossible. A similar effect can be obtained
from forcible dragging on the tongue but it is difficult to keep this up
so as to have the requisite lasting effect. Still another resort is to
rouse eructation by the motions of a rope introduced into the fauces.
The passing of a hollow probang into the rumen is very effective as
it not only secures a channel for the immediate escape of the gas, but
it also stimulates the demicanal and rumen to a continuous
eructation and consequent relief. Friedberger and Fröhner advise
driving the animals into a bath of cold water.
Of medicinal agents applicable to gastric tympany the best are
stimulants, antiseptics and chemical antidotes. Among stimulants
the alkaline preparations of ammonia hold a very high place. These,
however, act not as stimulants alone, but also as antacids and
indirectly as antidotes since the alkaline reaction checks the acid
fermentation which determines the evolution of the gas. They also
unite with and condense the carbon dioxide. Three ounces of the
aromatic spirits of ammonia, one ounce of the crystalline
sesquicarbonate, or half an ounce of the strong aqua ammonia may
be given to an ox, in not less than a quart of cold water. Next to this
is the oil of turpentine 2 oz., to be given in oil, milk, or yolk of egg.
But this too is an antiferment. The same remark applies to oil of
peppermint (½ oz.), the carminative seeds and their oils, and the
stronger alcoholic drinks (1 quart). Sulphuric or nitrous ether (2 oz.)
may be given in place. Pepper and ginger are more purely stimulant
and less antiseptic. Other alkalies—carbonate of potash or soda, or
lime water may be given freely.
Among agents that act more exclusively as antiseptics may be
named: muriatic acid 1 to 1½ drs. largely diluted in water; carbolic
acid, creosote or creolin, 4 drs. largely diluted; sulphite, hyposulphite
or bisulphite of soda 1 oz.; kerosene oil ½ pint; chloride of lime 4
drs.; chlorine water 1 pint; wood tar 2 oz. The latter agent is a
common domestic remedy in some places being given wrapped in a
cabbage leaf, and causing the flank to flatten down in a very few
minutes as if by magic. The extraordinarily rapid action of various
antiseptics is the most conclusive answer to the claim that the
disorder is a pure paresis of the walls of the rumen. The affection is
far more commonly and fundamentally an active fermentation, and
is best checked by a powerful antiferment. Even chloride of sodium
(½ lb.) and above all hypochlorite of soda or lime (½ oz.) may be
given with advantage in many cases.
Among agents which condense the gasses may be named
ammonia, calcined magnesia, and milk of lime for carbon dioxide,
and chlorine water for hydrogen.
Among agents used to rouse the torpid rumen and alimentary
canal are eserine (ox 3 grs., sheep ½ gr. subcutem), pilocarpin (ox 2
grs., sheep ⅕ gr.), barium chloride (ox 15 grs., sheep 3 to 4 grs.),
tincture of colchicum (ox 3 to 4 drs.). Trasbot mentions lard or butter
(ox 4 oz., sheep ½ oz.), as in common use in France.
In the most urgent cases, however, relief must be obtained by
puncture of the rumen, as a moment’s delay may mean death. The
seat for such puncture is on the left side, at a point equidistant from
the outer angle of the ilium, the last rib and the transverse processes
of the lumbar vertebræ. Any part of the left flank might be adopted to
enter the rumen, but, if too low down, the instrument might plunge
into solid ingesta, which would hinder the exit of gas, and would
endanger the escape of irritant liquids into the peritoneal cavity. In
an extra high puncture there is less danger, though a traumatism of
the spleen is possible under certain conditions. The best instrument
for the purpose is a trochar and cannula of six inches long and ⅓ to
½ inch in diameter. (For sheep ¼ inch is ample.) This instrument,
held like a dagger, may be plunged at one blow through the walls of
the abdomen and rumen until stopped by the shield on the cannula.
The trochar is now withdrawn and the gas escapes with a prolonged
hiss. If the urgency of the case will permit, the skin may be first
incised with a lancet or pen knife, and the point of the instrument
having been placed on the abdominal muscles, it is driven home by a
blow of the opposite palm. In the absence of the trochar the puncture
may be successfully made with a pocket knife or a pair of scissors,
which should be kept in the wound to maintain the orifice in the
rumen in apposition with that in the abdominal wall, until a metal
tube or quill can be introduced and held in the orifices.
When the gas has escaped by this channel its further formation can
be checked by pouring one of the antiferments through the cannula
into the rumen.
When the formation of an excess of gas has ceased, and the
resumption of easy eructation bespeaks the absence of further
danger, the cannula may be withdrawn and the wound covered with
tar or collodion.
When the persistent formation of gas indicates the need of
expulsion of offensive fermentescible matters, a full dose of salts may
be administered. If the presence of firmly impacted masses can be
detected, they may sometimes be broken up by a stout steel rod
passed through the cannula. If the solid masses prove to be hair or
woolen balls, rumenotomy is the only feasible means of getting rid of
them.
In chronic tympany caused by structural diseases of the
œsophagus, mediastinal glands, stomach or intestines, permanent
relief can only be obtained by measures which will remove these
respective causes.
CHRONIC TYMPANY OF THE RUMEN.