DISEASES OF THE SPLEEN. 707 



CHAPTER XLIX. 



DISEASES OF THE SPLEEN. 



This organ, although of considerable bulk and largely supplied 

 with blood, is not when diseased marked by symptoms par- 

 ticularly attractive either in the horse or other of our patients. 



This may not be attributed altogether to the rarity of dis- 

 turbance or textural change, but probably more to the fact 

 that in whatever manner operating in determining the 

 quantity or quality of the blood supplied to other organs, its 

 derangement and change does not appear to be largely pro- 

 ductive of phenomena attractive either by their severity or 

 diffusion ; it being well known that horses, as well as other 

 animals, will continue to work for years with spleens wonder- 

 fully changed and enormously enlarged. 



Of the entire diseased conditions affecting this organ we are 

 infonned less by any well-ascertained and well-connected 

 clinical history than by the revelations of after-death examina- 

 tions. That primary and active congestive and inflammatory 

 actions do occur we may beheve. Apart, however, from the 

 existence of such in connection with certain manifestations of 

 anthrax, we are probably not able to identify or differentiate 

 these from several somewhat similar conditions of other 

 abdominal organs. Neither are we able to distinguish those 

 secondary congestions and inflammations which we feel toler- 

 ably certain take place as the result of embolism and the 

 existence of ha2morrhagic infracts in the organ, the result of the 

 lodgment in the splenic vessels of particles of matter detached 

 from continued abscesses, sloughing sores, or particular forms 

 of structural change of the cardiac valves. 



When general congestive and inflammatory changes have 

 occuiTed, the entire organ or the greater part of it suffers 

 augmentation in bulk, darkening in colour, and loss of co- 

 hesion. In the cases of partial plugging of vessels and limited 

 vascular disturbances, which most probably occur during the 

 progress of such diseased conditions as cancer, lymphadenoma, 

 etc., we have circumscribed inflammatory areas extending for 

 a short distance around the infracts and abnoimal growths or 



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