PERCUSSION AND AUSCULTATION. /9 



Delafoiul, who appears to have had^ and to have profited by, 

 extensive opportunities of observation, to relying upon what 

 little we have to offer of our own ; since in our hands, to say 

 the truth, the practice has not proved prosperous. We give 

 what follows, from Delafond, more with a view of throwing 

 out some guides in the way of practice for those who may 

 be desirous of cultivating the science, than from any utility 

 or real value w^e are afraid they will be found of. It has 

 been observed, by some French writer, that to derive the 

 fullest advantage from auscultation, the man ought to visit 

 his patient (the horse) at midnight, when all is still and silent 

 around him ; and there is much truth in the remark, since 

 it is most difficult to find time and place which during the 

 day is free from sound or noise of some description or other. 

 One thing is most needful in the commencement of the 

 practice both of auscultation and percussion, and that is, to 

 make our ear familiar with the sounds of health, the normal 

 sounds, in order that we may run no risk of confounding 

 them with the abnormal or diseased sounds. 



Nasai. Cavities. — The ear, applied to the nostrils of horses, even 

 during repose, recognises such a sound as condensed air streaming through 

 some hollow tube would produce ; but through the parietes of the nasal 

 chambers, or through the sinuses of the head, no sound whatever can be 

 detected, either by the ear or the stethoscope ; unless after exertion, and 

 then a sort of snoring sound is heard in the former, while in the sinuses a 

 soft murmur only is audible. A tumid condition of the Schneiderian 

 membrane gives rise to the sound of thick wind, which, augmented, 

 becomes whistling; and this may exist either on one or both sides. Sounds 

 emanating from the larynx, windpipe, or bronchial tubes, or even from the 

 recesses of the lungs, sometimes retain their force to that degree within the 

 nasal chambers as to lead us to believe they arise there. Such mistakes 

 are easily corrected by applying the ear by turns to the larynx, neck, and 

 chest, the sound being greatest opposite to where it is produced. Snorting, 

 which may be excited at any time by momentarily closing the nostrils, and 

 which is occasionally thus produced to cause the ejection of matter from the 

 nasal chambers, may be put in practice by way of further testing the seat 

 of sound. 



The Sinuses of the Head, tested by percussion, either with the finger 

 doubled, or with a key or a piece of wood, or, what is better, with a 

 small hammer and a light wooden shield interposed, yield in the young 



