172 INFLAMMATORY DISEASES ; [BOOK II. 



or organ (the liver in particular) frequently devolves 

 into fever of the whole animal system, by means of 

 the rapid circulation of the blood through the 

 diseased organ. Inflammation of the liver, however, 

 is not so often indicated by great heat of the part, 

 as by enlargement thereof, visible during life : we 

 recently met with one which weighed nearly four- 

 score pounds, after being parboiled. 



Let us proceed to discuss the subject generally 

 at first, and to pursue each in detail afterwards ; 

 simply premising, that all the disorders incurred 

 by the horse are referable, more or less, to this 

 overheated or inflammatory state of his blood, and 

 its consequent unfitness for the purposes of duly 

 promoting animal life, health, and vigour. For, 

 the more heat, the more viscidity or thickness there 

 will be in the blood, and the less will it be found 

 capable of circulating the longer such unnatural 

 heat continues, up to a certain point of the disease : 

 when the animal is so far affected as to lose its ap- 

 petite, and consequently no fresh blood can be 

 formed by the digestive powers, the blood then be- 

 comes thinner every day, because its more solid 

 particles are constantly being deposited in the 

 cellular membrane to supply the waste that is un- 

 ceasingly going on there. The reader would do 

 well to read over again what is said concerning this 

 process of the annual system, at page 144, with the 

 references there made, to page 116, to page 72, 

 and, in fact, to the whole tenor of the second 

 chapter. But this supply soon fails, as necessarily 



