494 THE HORSE. 
serous membrane relieves itself It can be detected by the entire absence 
of respiratory murmur, and by the dulness on percussion. No treatment 
is of any avail but tapping, which may be readily and safely performed (if 
the diagnosis is correct) by passing a trocar between the eight and ninth 
ribs, near their cartilages. If, however, an error has been committed, the 
lung is wounded, and death will most probably ensue. 
PLEURODYNIA. 
BETWEEN THIS DISEASE AND THE LAST there is some similarity in the 
symptoms ; but in their nature, and in the treatment required, they are 
widely separated. It is, therefore, necessary that they should not be con- 
founded, for in the one case blood-letting and other active measures mav 
be unnecessarily adopted, and in the other a fatal result will most pro- 
bably occur for want of them. In pleuritis there is a quick pulse, with 
general constitutional disturbance, which will serve to distinguish it from 
pleurodynia, besides which, it is rarely that we meet with the former 
without some other affection of the lungs co-existing. When, therefore, 
a horse is evidently suffermg from acute pain in the walls of the thorax, 
unaccompanied by cough, hurried breathing, quick pulse, or fever, it may 
safely be diagnosed that the nature of the attack is a rheumatism of the 
intercostal muscles (pleurodynia), and not pleurisy. In treating it, bleed- 
ing and tartar emetic must be carefully avoided, and hot mustard and 
vinegar rubbed into the sides will be the most likely remedy to afford 
relief. 
PHTHISIS. 
WHEN A HORSE HAS LONG BEEN SUBJECT TO A CHRONIC COUGH, and, 
without losing appetite, wastes away rapidly, it may be assumed that he 
is a victim to phthisis, and especially if he is narrow-chested and has 
long shown signs of short wind. On examining the chest by the ear, it 
will be found to give out sounds of various kinds, depending upon the 
exact state of the lungs; but in most cases there will be great dulness on 
percussion, owing to the deposit of tubercles, in which the disease consists. 
In a confirmed case no treatment will avail, and the poor animal had 
better be destroyed. When the attack is slight, the progress of the 
disease may be stayed by counteracting inflammation in the ordinary way, 
avoiding loss of blood when possible. Hemorrhage, from the breaking 
down of the substance of the lung, by which a large blood-vessel is 
opened, is a common result of phthisis, and will be alluded to under the 
head of the diseases of the vessels of the lungs, at the end of this chapter. 
BROKEN WIND. 
A BROKEN-WINDED HORSE can be detected at once by any horseman 
possessed of experience, from the peculiar and forcible double expiraticn. 
Inspiration is performed as usual, then comes a rapid but not violent act 
of expiration, followed by a forcible repetition of the same, in which all 
the muscles of, respiration, auxiliary and ordinary, are called into play. 
This is, of course, most marked when the horse has been gallopped, but 
even when he is at rest the double expiration is manifest at almost any 
ordinary distance from the observer. The disease almost (if not quite) 
invariably consists in emphysema, or entrance of the air into unnatural 
