54 Ctncintiati Society of Natural History. 



A REMARKABLE MALFORMATION IX A CAT 



D. S. Kellicott, Columbus, Ohio. 



Congenital malformations of an animal's bod}' always attract 

 the curious, and prove deeply interesting to the anatomist 

 and the embryologist. The case described below was one of 

 profound transposition of the thoracic and abdominal viscera — 

 a phenomenon that is at least rare. The cat was an active, 

 young adult, Maltese male. It was prepared for dissection in 

 the usual way, by washing out the vascular system and 

 injecting it with plaster from the femoral vessels. Miss 011a 

 Buckman, a student in comparative anatomy, in preparing 

 to trace the thoracic blood vessels, discovered that they were 

 in abnormal positions. In short, it proved to be a case of 

 malformation by transposition of visceral organs that was 

 almost complete. This general statement might possibly 

 .suffice, but a detailed statement is added in the hope that it 

 maj' prove more useful for future reference. 



The axis of the heart made the usual angle with that of the 

 body, but had the apex directed toward the right side and the 

 base to the left ; the venous side of the heart was vcntro- 

 sinistrad and the arterial dorso-dextrad. The aortic arch, 

 slightly shortened in consequence of the heart's position, 

 turned to the right and passed caudad on that side of the 

 vertebral centra ; the order of branches from the arch were 

 also reversed, /. e., the right subclavian arose independently 

 and the left subclavian from the brachio-cephalic, as the right 

 usually does, just caudad of the origin of the carotids. The 

 brachio-cephalic was abnormally short, not exceeding half the 

 usual length. The postcava and ])recava were on the left 

 side, as a matter of course, but otherwise normal; the azygous 

 vein was on the left side al.so. 



The lungs likewise shared in the reversal. In the cat there 

 are three chief lobes in each lung with a small azygous lobe on 

 the right; in this instance it was attached to the left lung. 



