88 Veterinary Medicine. 



balls is not uncommon. Convulsions may occur, the head and 

 hind limbs being drawn back forcibly as in oposthotonos, or the 

 animal may lie flaccid and comatose from the first. The nasal, 

 buccal and orbital mucous membranes are usually congested, 

 deep red or livid, yet sometimes they are anaemic and pale 

 (Shock). The breathing is usually characteristic, being deep, 

 slow, labored, irregular and stertorous and accompanied by 

 puffing out of the cheeks at each expiration (except in solipedsy 

 Yet there are cases in which stertor is absent. The pulse is 

 usually slow, full and soft, and, in the carotids, throbbing, but 

 it may be weak and imperceptible. There may be complete un- 

 consciousness, and again from the first, or nearly so, there may 

 be a slight response to a stimulus, which cannot be referred alto- 

 gether to reflex action. In vomiting animals, emesis may ensue. 

 Stupor and coma are more or less marked, though liable to inter- 

 missions under any cause of irritation. 



Along with the above symptoms the spasms and sequent 

 paralysis, are significant. If confined to given muscles or groups 

 of muscles . (monoplegia) it usually implies pressure on some 

 special cortical convolutions presiding over these muscles, and 

 convulsions are to be expected. If there is hemiplegia it is sug- 

 gestive of implication of the medulla or pons on the opposite 

 side, or of a clot on the corpus striatum or extensively on one 

 side of the cerebrum. A clot in the lateral ventricle tends to 

 profound coma. So liable, however, is pressure to be extended 

 from one side of the brain to the other, and irritation on the one 

 side to rouse a corresponding condition on the opposite side, or 

 in related ganglia, that deductions of this kind cannot always be 

 implicitly relied on. 



Though an animal should recover from an attack there is liable 

 to remain some modification of the nervous functions, partial 

 anaesthesia, circumscribed paresis, dullness, lack of energy, irrit- 

 ability, or muscular atrophy. 



■ Cerebral embolism and thrombosis and their sequelae, infarction 

 and softening, give rise to corresponding symptoms, according to 

 the seat of the lesion, and like lesions of the blood vessels pre- 

 dispose to subsequent attacks. 



Diagnosis is based largely on the appearance, usually sudden 



