130 DISEASES or THE LUNGS. 



Notwithstanding these tests^ however, cases of pleurisy in a 

 sub-acute form occur in which the diagnosis even in the 

 primary stage is obscure. 



Our PROGNOSIS in pleurisy must be guarded, it being a 

 disease of highly dangerous tendency. If, however, we are 

 called early to the patient, and succeed in abstracting a 

 quantity of blood, we shall have a good chance of arresting 

 the inflammation. Should it proceed in spite of blood- 

 letting, though with diminished violence, there will still be 

 great reason to dread some sinister result. Now and then, 

 the disease hurries off the patient in the course of a few 

 hours, in opposition to all remedial measures. 



The TERMINATIONS of pleurisy are four, — i^esoluUon, 

 effusion, suppuration, gangrene. That in resolution has 

 already been disposed of : we will now consider 



Effusion. — ^It is of two kinds, — loater and lymph: the 

 one being technically known under the appellation of 

 hydrothorax, or water in the chest; the other, by that of 

 albuminous effusion, adhesions, or false membranes. Although 

 these effusions may exist independently, they far more fre- 

 quently co-exist. When a horse dies from a pleurisy which 

 has lasted any length of time, we expect to — and commonly 

 do — find that appearance in the chest which an old vete- 

 rinary friend of mine was wont aptly to depict by saying, 

 '^the cavity of the chest was hung with shreds of lymph, 

 after the fashion of a cobweb :'' and the comparison is by no 

 means an unhappy one. These subjects will be continued 

 under the headings — Hydrothorax and Adhesion. 



Pleurisy rarely confined to one side. — We know 

 this from practice ; though experiment — as will be hereafter 

 shown — proves that it is from sympathy often that the other 

 side takes the disease. 



The treatment of pleurisy may be said to be comprised 

 in the regimen and remedies which have been recom- 

 mended to be adopted in pneumonia : there are, however, 

 some points of difference in the application of such treatment, 

 to which we would proceed to direct attention. 



Bloodletting, I would set the same restrictions on. 



