430 VENOUS HEMORRHAGE AIR IN THE VEINS. 



large, there is invariably a tendency to closure of the venous 

 orifice by a clot forming around it, and then the wound in 

 the coats heals. Pinning the cutaneous wound is alone to be 

 had recourse to. The practice of tying even a large vein, 

 except in the greatest emergency, is to be condemned. It is 

 always dangerous. 



AIR IN THE VEINS. 



In the act of bleeding, if a bold opening has been practised 

 low down on the jugular vein near the opening into the 

 chest, the aspiratory force in the act of breathing is apt to 

 draw air into the orifice made with the fleam. A gurgling 

 sound is heard, the animal immediately staggers, roars, falls, 

 and soon dies in considerable agony, as if suffocated and in 

 violent convulsions. The symptoms are more severe than if 

 air is blown into the veins, whereby a large quantity passes 

 in at once, and kills almost instantaneously. I have seen a 

 horse bled in a dissecting-room by a student, struggle be- 

 tween life and death for half-an-hour with violent symptoms 

 of dyspnoea. In any such case the practitioner noticing that 

 the moment he removes the finger from pressing on the vein 

 which he has pierced, no blood flows, but that there is a suc- 

 tion sound, the finger must be instantly applied on the orifice, 

 or, perhaps, besfc beneath it on the vein, so as to let a little 

 blood flow, and then the aperture is closed. If the practi- 

 tioner is not very prompt, the animal soon dies. 



THROMBUS. 



When, in bleeding a horse, either from the imperfect 

 adaptation of the venous and cutaneous orifices as the animal 

 moves its neck, or from the smallness of the opening in the 

 skin, blood is apt to become effused in the areolar tissue 

 around the vein, the part swells, the blood ceases to flow 



