144 METASTASIS. 



METASTASIS. 



As this term is frequently used by practitioners, it 

 may be well to explain that it is a Greek word signify- 

 ing a removal from one place to another, employed as 

 a technical designation in describing a change of the 

 seat of disease from one part of the animal structure 

 to another, which is by no means uncommon: for 

 instance, when the feet are attacked with fever, that 

 malady will appear to remove itself to some other and 

 probably distant part, and fix itself on the lungs or 

 other viscera, the same way that inflammation of the 

 lungs and other parts of the upper structure will change 

 amongst themselves, or from their own seat of disease 

 to the feet.* I have even known superpurgation (occa- 

 sioned, in a pair of horses, by undue, but not severe 

 work when under the irritation of the medicine) to 



* For example, an animal is in nearly a hopeless state from in- 

 flammation of the lungs and pleura, perhaps as a complication of 

 distemper. Suddenly there is an amelioration in the symptoms ; 

 the hurried breathing resumes the characteristics of ordinary re- 

 spiration — the owner, or veterinary surgeon in attendance, pro- 

 nounces the patient to be out of danger — the improvement is re- 

 garded as almost miraculous. But in about twenty-four hours, 

 often less, the horse is observed to move with difficulty in the 

 stable ; if he lies down, he is disinclined to get up ; when standing, 

 the fore feet are kept considerably more in advance than usual, 

 the hind ones far forward under the body, so that they may as 

 much as possible relieve the fore feet and legs from the superin- 

 cumbent weight. In aggravated cases, as the heels of the fore feet 

 are the parts which bear the most weight in progression, the horse, 

 when forced to walk, which he can only accomplish with great 

 difiBculty, elevates the toe at everj^ step, bringing the heel, instead 

 of it, to the ground. The horse is then suflfering from acute lamin- 

 itis, or what is more generally in horse-parlance termed "founder." 



