392 Veterinary Medicine. 



or clothing. Inflammation of the umbilicus and resulting ab- 

 scess may prove an entrance way for the germs either by rupture 

 into the peritoneum or by causing adhesions between two loops 

 of intestines from which the microbes escape through the 

 weakened tissues. Wounds made in operations on hernias may 

 have a similar ending and as Dieckerhoff has pointed out the 

 onset of the peritonitis may be delayed for one or two weeks 

 while the abscess is maturing or the walls of the bowels are being 

 traversed by the microbes. Strangulated hernias and those in 

 which the intestine is congested are especially subject to such 

 peritonitis, as the germs may enter by the external wound and 

 through the intestinal wall as well. The author has seen artificial 

 anus formed through inclusion in the clamps of an adherent loop 

 of small intestine, and at such a point peritonitis is liable to start. 



Wounds of the rectum or vagina are sometimes the starting 

 point of the inflammation. The penis of a stallion entering and 

 lacerating the rectum of a mare, or the large penis of an ardent 

 male rupturing the roof of the vagina are occasional causes. The 

 latter may occur without fatal consequences, yet the author has 

 seen a generalized and rapidly fatal attack follow such an injury 

 when the mare had at once thereafter made a journey of nine 

 miles in a cold rainstorm. The horse was a Percheron with very 

 large penis and the mare would weigh about 900 lbs. The cas- 

 tration of mares, even through the vagina may be followed by 

 peritonitis from sepsis of the instruments, hands or arms. 



The castration of the horse is more liable to be followed by this 

 infection. Too often no attempt at asepsis is made, implicit trust 

 being placed in the defensive power of the tissues. In other cases 

 even a very careful local antisepsis fails, the germ being already 

 present in the circulation and the extensive wound and resulting 

 local congestion and debility are seized upon as an opportunity 

 for colonization and growth. This infection usually takes place 

 from the second to the sixth day while the inguinal canal and 

 vaginal sheath are still open to the cavity of the abdomen. Later 

 when these have closed by adhesion, and when protective granu- 

 lation has formed, the implication of the peritoneum is rare. 



b. Rupture of the Stomach or Intestine. This comes as 

 already shown from gaseous distension, overloading, sudden 

 shock or concussion, obstruction by dried ingesta, calculi, foreign 



