ASCITES. 427 



tial emunctories to work as the kidneys ; in fact, on the 

 contrary, this is just such a case in which we should give the 

 Plummer's ball. 



The rosT-MORTEM Appearances have turned out to be 

 — yellowness and laxity of the muscular fibre ; effusion into 

 the cellular membrane; thickening of the pericardium and 

 pleura, with effusion almost to the amount to collapse the 

 lungs and arrest the heart's action ; effusion into the 

 omentum, mesentery, peritoneum. In one, and but one, 

 subject, the kidneys were become disorganised. 



The ASTHENIC OR PASSIVE FORM OF AsciTES is that in 

 which we are most likely to be deceived by this disease. 

 When anything of the kind, from preceding and continued 

 ill-health, or from unthriviiig ill-conditioned state of body, is 

 apprehended, we must view with suspicion such symptoms as 

 *' swellings of an oedematous character, coming first under 

 the throat, and afterwards in the scrotum and subabdominal 

 cellular tissue,^' the legs, &c. A highly buffed condition of 

 blood is likewise symptomatic of the ascitic state. In these 

 cases, however, enteritic symptoms come on before death ; 

 although the animal, with disease of chronic nature going on 

 within the abdominal cavity, has been all along without any 

 positive illness until such symptoms do actually make their 

 eruption. 



Diagnostic. — "But a few years ago, veterinarians in 

 England w^ould have ridiculed the idea of naming even such 

 a thing as a diagnostic for the " obscure '^ and then hardly- 

 known disease we are here considering. Experience, how- 

 ever, has since taught us that we may with some confidence 

 regard the external dropsy, the enlarged and fluctuating 

 belly, the peculiar dull sounds elicited by percussion, to- 

 gether with other corroboratory signs and circumstances, as 

 pretty reliable tests of its presence. 



The Prognostic must be such as to create alarm ; though 

 instances of recovery be recorded, they are seemingly but in- 

 cidental, and too rare to afford us any ground for calculating 

 on any addition to them. 



Mr. Cartwright relates a case he considered to be one of 



