LAMENESS, FROM VARIVUS CAUSES. 335 
the joints and muscles to the heart, and its investing inembraneg, 
and it is the danger of this change in the seat of the disease that 
venders 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 inflammaticn 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 epizodtic 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 epizodtic 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 pleara 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 object 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 
*Nipate or Porassa.—In a case of synovial rheumatism this remedy was 
given by « Boston physician, in a single dose of one ounce, dissolved in a pint 
