262 LYMPHANGITIS. 



bowels and air-passages. In animals so predisposed very 

 slight disturbance of that natural equilibrium which ought to 

 subsist amongst the different steps of the assimilatory process 

 most surely tends to the appearance of this disorder. 



h. Nature. — Peculiarly a disease of hard work and exalted 

 functional activity, it is occasionally met with under opposite 

 conditions, and is intimately connected with the infringement 

 of certain dietetic and sanitary laws. Non-contagious and 

 generally susceptible of amelioration by treatment, it is still a 

 matter of much importance from its liability to recur, and the 

 certainty that after one or two seizures the structural altera- 

 tions in connection with the absorbents of the limb, the 

 glandular structures, and surrounding tissue are such that 

 permanent thickening, unsightliness, weakness, and consequent 

 unsoundness are the result. It seems highly probable that 

 the first step in the act of derangement is in connection with 

 the passage into the blood of material appropriated during 

 intestinal digestion ; whether this is the result of simple 

 redundancy of material, or some abnormal action, chemical or 

 vital, it is rapidly extended to, and is first and most clearly 

 visible in that other process connected with the elaboration of 

 material for nutrition, in which the lymphatic glands and 

 vessels act so prominent a part. It is in this manner that 

 sudden alterations as to quantity or quality of nutriment 

 and enforced rest during seasons of good feeding and hard 

 work are found to act so powerfully as exciting causes ; the 

 former of these we meet with in the case of horses being 

 rapidly made up in condition for sale or show, and the latter 

 in hard- worked and well-fed animals on being confined to the 

 stable on Sundays, or in consequence of Aveather or other un- 

 favourable circumstances preventing their being employed as 

 usual. 



In all the milder forms of the disease Avhere fever and 

 general derangement are slight, there is evidently a dispropor- 

 tion betAveen the nutritive material throAvn into the system 

 and the poAvers of assimilation and excretion. This redund- 

 ancy of nutritive pabulum is very early shoAvn in the altered 

 condition of the blood. AMicn abstracted in these cases the 

 alteration is shoAvn by the increased tendency exhibited by 

 the formed and coloured constituents to separate from the 



