Diseases of the Heart and Organs of Circulation. 297 



excitement attendant on active inflammatory or other disease, or 

 a state of weakness and debility. In this last condition the heart 

 beats more frequently to secure a more rapid circulation in the 

 capillary blood vessels, and thus make up to the craving tissues 

 by frequency of contact, what is wanting in the quantity and 

 quality of the nutritive fluid. This point cannot be too much 

 insisted upon, as the fatal doctrine that a rapid pulse indicates 

 force of the circulation is very misleading as to treatment. 



The force and character of the pulse differ in the various 

 species. In the horse it is full, moderately tense and elastic. 

 In the ass and mule it is smaller and harder, with an inequality 

 of force in successive beats, and sometimes even a beat is sup- 

 pressed or imperceptible. In the ox the pulse is full, soft and 

 regular, appearing to roll forward beneath the fingers. In the 

 sheep and goat the pulse is small but with a peculiar quick or 

 sharp beat. The pig's pulse is said to be firm and hard. That 

 of the dog and cat is firm and hard coming with a sharp impulse 

 against the finger. In the dog, however, successive beats are not 

 always of the same force and an intermission or complete absence 

 of a beat is by no means an indication of disease of the heart or 

 other serious malady. It often attends the slightest excitement 

 in a perfectly healthy animal. 



In disease thQ pulsations may become : — frequent or increased 

 in number ; slow or decreased in number ; quick or striking with 

 a sharp impulse against the finger ; tardy or without sharpness 

 of stroke and as if they rolled slowly past under the finger ; full 

 and strong when the impulse is forcible and not easily compressed 

 b}'- the finger ; weak, feeble or indistinct in the opposite con- 

 ditions ; small when though perfectly distinct and forcible they 

 are wanting in fulness ; hard, when forcible and jarring (this 

 is sometimes called wiry or, if smaller, thready) ; soft when 

 though the artery may be full the beat is devoid of hardness and 

 easily compressible so as to be unfelt ; oppressed when with a 

 full rounded artery, the impulse is jerking though not hard and 

 as if the distended vessels opposed the transmission of the im- 

 pulse ; jerking and receding — leaping, when with empty and 

 flaccid arteries the pulse seems to leap forward with each beat of 

 the heart — (this pulsation may be visible to the eye in the caro- 

 tids) ; intermittent when after a number of beats at regular in- 



