DISEASES OF THE HEART 455 



which have enabled the members of the veterinary profession to recognize 

 the clinical symj)toms of some of the diseases of the heart of the lower 

 animals, which they can now diagnose with almost absolute certainty, 

 although it still remains true that the physician has enormous oppor- 

 tunities and facilities in the examination of the heart of the human subject 

 which are not, and cannot, under any possible conditions, be possessed by 

 the veterinary surgeon. The heart of the horse and other lai'ge mam- 

 malians is so perfectly covered by the bones and muscles of the upper part 

 of the fore extremities that it is absolutely impossible to apply the stetho- 

 scope or the ear over every portion of the organ, as can be easily done in 

 the human subject; further, the instrument cannot be employed with the 

 same advantage as it possesses in the hands of the physician. Even in 

 those parts which can be reached, the covering of hair interposes an ob- 

 struction which considerably alters and obscures the sounds which can be 

 recognized, and it is on this account that the majority of veterinary 

 surgeons content themselves with the application of the ear to the part of 

 the animal which they wish to auscultate instead of using the stethoscope 

 for the purpose. In this connection, however, it may be observed that the 

 ear is a very poor substitute for the stethoecope when the latter is in a 

 practised hand aided by an educated ear. 



Of the fact that the heart in the lower animals is subject to most of the 

 diseases which are well known in the human subject, the experience which 

 has been gained by post-mortem examination has afforded abundant evi- 

 dence, and the veterinary pathologist has no difficulty whatever in recog- 

 nizing the true characteristics of the various morbid conditions which are 

 exhibited after death. His difficulty is confined entirely to the detection of 

 each special form of disease in the living animal, and while he would not 

 be content to accept Mayhew's imputation, that veterinary science cannot 

 detect one state from another while the animal is alive, he would without 

 hesitation admit the great difficulty of arriving at a satisfactory conclusion 

 from symptoms which may be present at the time of his examination. 

 Certainly it is the case that some of the most marked symptoms which 

 Mayhew describes would not necessarily suggest to him the existence of 

 any disease of the heart. 



In connection with the subject of clinical symptoms it is fully recog- 

 nized by the physician that the evidences of disease, or evidences which 

 may be construed into signs of disease, of the heart, may be present in 

 parts of the system remote from the organ itself. There is nothing at all 

 remarkable in this proposition when it is remembered that the heart is the 

 organ which distributes the blood over the whole of the body, and is there- 

 fore connected more or less directly with every other part of the system. 



