DISEASES OE THE LIVER AND SPLEEN, 



SPLENITIS. 



As we progress in veterinary knowledge^ we not only 

 become better informed about recognised diseases^ and more 

 competent to treat them^ but we obtain acquaintance with 

 disorders of whose existence we had been either in doubt or 

 altogether ignorant. Splenitis is of this liitter class. No 

 veterinarian any longer entertains a doubt about the spleen 

 being the occasional seat of inflammation ; but we have yet 

 to learn by what symptoms we are to diagnosticate this. 

 Mr. Blaine acknowledges never having met with a case of 

 splenitis in his own practice ; but informs us he had recently 

 " heard of a well-authenticated, one, in which the symptoms so 

 exactly resembled hepatitis as to be mistaken by a very ob- 

 servant practitioner." — ^"^The violence of the disease destroyed 

 the horse on the fourth day." The spleen was found " highly 

 inflamed, and nearly gangrenous." What I should take to 

 be a similar case is narrated in ^ The Veterinarian/ for 

 1836j by Mr. Cartwright. The symptoms were those of 

 colic. Indeed, so similar were they, that Mr. Cartwright 

 acknowlegdes he ^' took it from the commencement to be 

 obstruction of the bowels." The spleen — the only viscus 

 diseased — proved ''double its wonted size, gorged with blood, 

 and black as jet. Its natural tough texture was quite broken 

 down, and it was soft^ and in a manner approaching to gan- 

 grene. There appears the singular coincidence between 

 this and Mr. Blaine^s case — that both patients died on the 

 fourth day. I cannot say I ever encountered this active form 

 of the disorder myself; but I have on several occasions found, 

 the spleen much enlarged, a change I sliould feel inclined 

 to attribute to a sort of chronic splenitis. 



A¥e learn from Hurtrel d^Arboval that Ischenlin, veteri- 

 narian to the Grand Duke of Baden, has given the following 

 description of the disease, under the denomination of Gan- 

 grenous Inflammation of the Spleen : "During the hot 

 mouths — July, August, and September — rarely at other 

 seasons, the disorder appears, and commonly as an epizootic. 



