GENERAL SYMPTOMS. 63 



Uh. The Secerning. — The secretions and excretions in general 

 are materially diminished; the bowels are constipated, mainly 

 from want of mucous secretion from their lining membrane ; the 

 skin is hot and dry ; or, if pain be the characteristic of the local 

 inflammation, there wiU be partial sweats on the surface of the 

 body ; the mouth is parched and dry ; the urine is scanty, high- 

 coloured, sparingly aqueous, and holding much saline matter in 

 solution. 



^th. Tlie Nutritive. — Digestion and assimilation are interrupted; 

 as the fever advances, so does emaciation ; and strength becomes 

 more and more reduced. 



As already observed, there is no fixed relation between the 

 degree or intensity of internal inflammations and the constitu- 

 tional fever attending them ; nor is the fever always propor- 

 tioned in its degree of violence to either the size or importance 

 of the part inflamed. This is insisted on by Drs. Alison and 

 Watson, and their conclusions may be accepted, and shortly 

 stated. Dr. Alison writes : — " In some cases where we are 

 sure that we have had inflammation going on under our inspec- 

 tion to extensive effusion of pus, the pulse has been feeble, the 

 skin cool and damp, and the patient exhausted and faint on 

 the slightest exertion ; while in others there is high and more 

 inflammatory fever, and in some of these the organ inflamed 

 has been so to no extent, and its function comparatively little 

 affected, but yet the patient has become comatose early, as in 

 typhus, and died so." Every veterinarian of experience will be 

 able to bear out the correctness of these observations from the 

 statistics of his own practice. Many inflammations wiU have 

 come under his notice where the danger has been compara- 

 tively slight, and the fever high; and others where the local 

 inflammation has been most imminent, and the accompany- 

 ing fever has been hardly observable. The situation, tlie 

 extent, and the degree of the local inflammation being the same, 

 the fever generally runs higher in the young plethoric animal 

 than in the more aged class of patients. Young horses newly 

 bought from the breeder, and brought into large towns, sufier 

 more severely from fever, when the local disease is perhaps 

 very trivial, than those which are used to town work, town diet, 

 and management, and are in what is termed condition. The 

 type of the inflammatory fever is modified by other circura- 



