LAMENESS, FROM VARIOUS CAUSES. 335 



the joints and muscles to the heart, and its investing membranes, 

 and it is the danger of this change in the seat of the disease that 

 renders rheumatism so formidable, and often so fatal. It always 

 leaves the parts affected so altered as to be extremely predisposed 

 to subsequent attacks, and it is more than probable that this altered 

 condition is reproduced in the progenies of rheumatic subjects, and 

 constitutes in them the inherent tendency to the disease. 



Horses sometimes suffer from rheumatic inflammation in the 

 fibrous sheathing envelopes of the muscles of the neck, constitut- 

 ing what is popularly known as the chords. When thus affected, 

 the animal is very stiff, remains as much as possible in one posi- 

 tion, and is unwilling to bend his neck either one way or the other, 

 or to elevate or depress his head. There is always more or less 

 fever, with a strong, full pulse. Sometimes, as in lumbago, in the 

 human subject, it affects the muscles of the back and loins, caus- 

 ing stiffness, tenderness, and pain, which are especially evinced on 

 moving or turning the animal. These rheumatic affections are 

 very readily produced in predisposed subjects by exposure to rain 

 and cold, especially when accompanied by overheating or exhaus- 

 tion. 



Rheumatism sometimes occurs in horses as a prominent symp- 

 tom of that epizootic affection which usually receives the much- 

 abused title of influenza. In such cases the rheumatism is of a 

 somewhat more subacute or chronic character than common, and 

 is accompanied by that low, debilitating fever so often the con- 

 comitant of epizootic maladies. It usually affects all parts of the 

 body susceptible of the rheumatic inflammation, is attended par- 

 ticularly by those symptoms which indicate disease of the heart 

 and pericardium, as an intermittent pulse, etc., and often termi- 

 nates fatally by effusions into the pleura or pericardium, thus 

 causing death by arresting the motions of the heart." 



Treatment. — In the treatment of rheumatism simulating an in- 

 flammatory type, our first objec I is to produce a sedative effect on 

 the heart and its vessels of circulation. With this object in view, 

 we administer one or two drachms of fluid extract of gelseminum 

 every four hours, until the pulse becomes softer. In the mean time 

 a few doses of nitrate of potass* should be given in the water 



•Nitrate of Potassa. — In a case of synovial rheumatism thiB remedy wu 

 giTfn by a Boston physician, in a single Jose of one ounce, dissolved in a piat 



