DILATATION. 213 



Mr. Pritchard was requested to examine a six-year-old 

 mare, on account of falling away in flesh. He found her 

 poor and lean on the rib, with belly large, and coat un- 

 healthy; although she had been for several weeks in good 

 pasture, where she, otherwise, appeared tolerably well and 

 lively. Pulse 84, rather hard and irregular. The impulse 

 of the heart indicated a change in its structure, by a loud 

 and sonorous stroke, recognised on the right side of the 

 chest nearly as forcibly as on the left. Its beating was 

 regular ; but an unnatural rhythm, a throbbing palpitation, 

 accompanied the stroke. The blood in the jugular veins 

 met with considerable impediment. The regurgitation ob- 

 served in these vessels at the bottom of the neck, slight in 

 horses in health, was in this mare considerable, and ex- 

 tended up the neck even to the head. The belly and legs 

 were slightly oedematous. At length, diarrhoea attacked 

 her, and carried her off. The pericardium was thinner and 

 more capacious than ordinary. The heart appeared un- 

 usually large and flabby; lymph was effused into the cellular 

 substance around its base; the right auricle was very much 

 enlarged, being three times the size of the left, and its walls 

 thin; the right ventricle was dilated, but not at all in pro- 

 portion with the auricle; the left auricle was not dilated, 

 but the left ventricle was much enlarged, and its walls, 

 especially at the extreme of the apex, so thin that Mr. Pritchard 

 felt a little astonished that it could have contracted without 

 rupture, for it was not more than one eighth of an inch in 

 thickness. The heart weighed ten pounds, and measured 

 in circumference, at the base, two feet seven inches. Tlie 

 lungs were perfectly healthy. Mucous lining of the bowels 

 tumid from serous engorgement. Absorbents of the large 

 intestines loaded with red-yellow lymph ; but near to the re- 

 ceptaculum chyli, with blood. The thoracic duct contained 

 principally blood, but was not much dilated. The liver was 

 in a state of sanguineous engorgement, weighing nearly 

 thirty pounds. There was extravasation of blood into the 

 parenchyma. 



A most extraordinary case of dilatation or aneurism of 



