121 



PLEURISY. 



By pleuritis, or pleurisy, is commonly understood inflam- 

 mation of the pleura without inflammation of the lung: 

 when both pleura and lung are involved in the inflammation, 

 we denominate the case pleuy^o -pneumonia. At the time 

 that I was a pupil at the Veterinary College these three 

 diseases, or forms of disease, were included under the 

 phrase "inflammation of the lungs/^ The lungs were 

 supposed in all such cases to be the seat of disease; whether 

 the pleura participated or not in the inflammation being never 

 inquired into until after death. The French veterinarians 

 were the first to call our attention to the distinctness of 

 these diseases, and to instruct us how in practice we were to 

 know one from the other; and in our own country no 

 veterinarian took more pains to learn and demonstrate this 

 difierence than my ever-to-be-lamented friend, Mr. John 

 Field. ^ Whether, in strict accordance with pathological 

 definition, inflammation is ever fully developed in the pleura 

 without extending to the lung, or vice versa, is not a 

 question I shall trouble myself to solve : all that it being 

 necessary for us to know, in my opinion, is the fact, that, 

 when inflammation is invading these parts, it is sufficiently 

 predominant in one to induce lis to regard that as the 

 main or principal seat of disease, and to treat the case in 

 accordance with such views ; and that disease is rarely or 

 never so uniform in its attack of the two parts as to lead us 

 to believe that one is quite as much the object of care as the 

 other. There are cases in abundance of pleuro -pneumonia, 

 greatly more than of any other description : still, I contend, 

 that, in almost all of them, we shall find either the lungs or 

 the pleura to be the part primarily and principally affected; 

 and as such, as I before observed, to be the especial object 

 of treatment. 



"Is pleurisy really a less frequent disease than pneumonia? 



' Mr. Field read a paper on the su])ject to the Veterinary Society, which was 

 afterwards published in the second vol. of the * J Veterinarian.^ 



