INGUINAL HERNIA. 879 



pinched at the rmg, a swelling being thereby produced about the size of 

 a nut ; at other times, sufficient of the gut enters the inguinal canal to 

 admit of the accumulation of matters, stercoral or gaseous, or both, and 

 the consequences are, distension and gangrene. 



The Symptoms of recent Strangulation are — aggravated colic, which 

 ceases only with the supervention of gangrene ; alternate ascent and 

 descent of the testicle, at first in quick succession, afterwards at longer 

 and longer intervals, until at last the organ continues drawn up — no 

 longer perceptible below. Tortured with pain, the animal lies down and 

 rolls upon his back, and maintains that position — appearing to derive 

 from it temporary relief. While in the erect posture he quite writhes 

 from suffering, and, with his fore feet fixed, crouches almost down to the 

 ground. He breaks out into a profuse sweat ; and in that state ends his 

 agony, not by lying down and struggling, as in ordinary enteritic cases, 

 but by falling at once prostrate, a lifeless carcass. In a case that occurred 

 to M. Languenard, and another which happened to M. Girard himself, the 

 spasms were attended by vomiting, and, in the former, also by rupture of 

 the diaphragm. 



HERNIA IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING CASTRATION— 

 what M. Girard calls the hernia of castration — is produced either by the 

 violent struggles of the animal while under the operation, or else appears 

 in the act of rising. In its effects it is essentially similar to the one 

 already described. 



SCROTAL HERNIA, or oscheocele, owes its production to dilata- 

 tion of the vaginal sheath of the testicle, combined with relaxation of the 

 fibrous tissue surrounding the ring, and is at first mostly intermittent ; 

 that is, it disappears during repose, and returns under exercise or exer- 

 tion ; which variable condition continues until such a descent takes place 

 as renders the tumour, from its weight, incapable of yielding to the retrac- 

 tion of the surrounding parts : in this condition its augmentation goes on, 

 until the matters accumulated within the gut produce obstruction, and 

 that becomes followed by strangulation. These changes, so far from being 

 sudden, proceed rather slowly ; and accumulation and obstruction always 

 precede strangulation. While the accumulation is going on, we may ob- 

 serve loathing of food, dulness, indisposition to move ; also, as the 

 engorgement proceeds, loss of appetite, constipation, borborygma, colic. 

 Strangulation adds virulence to these symptoms, occasioning, as in recent 

 hernia, the greatest distress, until gangrene takes place, and then all pain 

 suddenly ceases, and cold sweats, shiverings, and convulsions, close the 

 scene. 



Strangulation. — Practical observations show us that old herniae become 

 strangulated from engorgement, and not from stricture around the neck 

 of the sac at the ring : that can be considered but as a secondary cause 



