BROKEN WIND. — DEFINITION. 513 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



BROKEN WIND. 



When viewing this diseased condition somewhat carefully 

 there is a certain amount of difficulty experienced in giving it 

 a place in any attempted methodical arrangement of diseases. 



In its most characteristic symptoms it is apparently so inti- 

 mately associated with disturbed respiration, if not invariably 

 with tissue-changes in the organs chiefly concerned in the 

 performance of this function, that its place seems naturally 

 amongst the diseases of these organs, where we now place 

 it. Viewed again from another standpoint, and with the 

 light furnished us by a study of the causes which seem to 

 produce it, we might, with little violence to the subject, 

 regard it as a disturbance of digestion or of innervation. 



Definition. — A considerably disturbed condition of resinration, 

 usually gradual in its development and non-inflammatory in 

 its character, distinguished by distressed and spasmodic breath- 

 ing ; inspiration being executed easily and steadily, expiration 

 protracted, and accomplished^ by a double effort. The dysp- 

 noea is continued, but marked by remissions and accessions, 

 not, hotvever, intermittent, as in asthma, and is accompanied 

 with a pecidiar short, nervous, pathognomonic cough. These 

 features are generally aggravated by association vjith gastric 

 and occasionally ivith cardiac complications. 



Pathology, a. Nature. — This is one of those diseases of the 

 horse which has given rise to greater divergence of opinion as 

 respects its nature than most others, and it seems very early in 

 the history of the profession to have engaged the attention of 

 those who made these diseases their study. Blaine, writing of 

 it, says : ' It has been attributed to external and internal 

 causes, to a defect and to a superabundance of vital energy ; 

 to altered structure of the heart, of the lungs, of the diajDhragm, 

 the stomach, the liver, etc. It is a lesion with some, nervous 

 with others, and simple distension with a third.' 



One reason why the opinions entertained as to the nature of 

 the disease have been so different, is the fact that the examina- 

 tions which have been made of the organs of animals notorious 



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