10 PATHOLOGY. 



run a less favouraLle course in animals with this temperament, 

 there being a tendency to the effusion of serum, to deliquescence 

 of organs, and to gangrene, and not to the exudation of plastic 

 lymph, as in animals in which tonicity is not defective. 



Cattle and sheep are generally considered to possess a lym- 

 phatic temperament. This supposition is to my mind hypotheti- 

 cal, for, with the exception of liability to become more rapidly 

 anasmic, and infested by parasites when improperly fed, and to 

 suffer from the dropsies associated with the mal-condition so 

 induced, it is found that these animals do not exhibit the same 

 tendency to oedematous swellings and other signs of debilitated 

 circulatory powers as the horse, and in the ox particularly lymph 

 is abundantly exuded in some inflammations. 



The nervous temperament is manifested by agitation and ex- 

 citement, and although it is called nervous, it does not follow 

 that an animal possessing it has extra nervous power. Indeed, 

 the contrary is often the case, for an animal of this kind gene- 

 rally becomes exhausted in a very short time. The term seems 

 to imply a want of proportion of some of the functions or 

 properties of the nervous system. 



Nervous animals are easily frightened, and a sudden fright 

 may be followed by serious illness, such as violent purgings, loss 

 of appetite, tremblings and excitement, which may continvie for 

 several hours or even days, and, what is more serious, sudden 

 death from rupture of the heart. I have seen one sudden death 

 in the horse from this cause — of one that was quite well at 

 the time. In another, not of death, but of serious illness. I 

 have it recorded that an old hunter, every time it was shod, was 

 seized with purging, loss of appetite, tremblings, snorting with 

 fear, and other symptoms of excitement, which always continued 

 for three days. 



Previous diseases are also predisposing causes of new ones. 

 Tims we find many horses recovering or recovered from an 

 epizootic become the subject of rheumatism in a joint, bursa, 

 or tendon. Catarrhal fever is often succeeded by purpura. 

 Chorea succeeds distemper in the dog. Lymphangitis predis- 

 poses to succeeding attacks of the same affection ; and if under 

 this head we classify artificial diseases, as induced by the opera- 

 tion of medicine, purgative, or other evacuant, we can understand 

 how, during the prevalence of the epizootic influence, epizootic 



