TRAUMATIC PERICARDITIS. FOREIGN BODIES IN 

 THE PERICARDIUM. 



This may occur in any animal, but is especially common in 

 dairy cows, fed indoors, and liable to swallow pins, needles, 

 wires, nails and other sharp-pointed metallic objects. 



Causes. Penetrating wounds from outside may implicate the 

 heart-sac in any animal— fork or bayonet wounds, shot, wounds 

 by horns or tusks, — but in ordinary practice these are so rare 

 that interest centres especially on the foreign bodies which pass 

 from the reticulum to the heart in cattle, and small ruminants. 

 The conditions which predispose ruminants may be shortly 

 stated. 



ist. The gross feeding of cattle and goats. Cattle naturally 

 take to luxuriant pastures. While sheep, with their delicate 

 and sensitive lips, nibble the grass to its roots, and prefer the 

 more aromatic products of the hills, cattle require a bite large 

 enough to be drawn in by the prehensile tongue, and thus take 

 to the larger, coarser grasses of the rich bottom land. Its cloven 

 foot is even adapted to the soft or marshy ground, expanding as 

 it descends . and contracting into smaller compass as it is drawn 

 out. To this is added a ravenous appetite, which has been 

 fostered in domestic cattle to develop the early maturity or rapid 

 fattening, or the phenomenal flow of milk, and the regular peri- 

 odical feeds favor the same disposition. The bovine animal in 

 domesticity takes a large mouthful and with one or two strokes 

 of the jaws and a speedy insalivation, passes it on into the rumen 

 to be better masticated at leisure in the process of rumination. 

 Hence it is that objects of all kinds and of considerable size are 

 swallowed without the animal being conscious of their presence. 

 In stables, pins and needles, from the clothes of the attendants, 

 drop into the mangers or fodder, nails carelessly handled get into 

 the food, and the cut ends of wires used 'va pressing hay, together 

 with other objects that are almost equally dangerous. While 

 goats do not use the tongue to draw in their food, yet they are 

 notorious for chewing and swallowing non-alimentary substances, 

 so that they too are largely exposed to the danger in hand. lyike 



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