452 Veterinary Medicine. 



cattle, and especially pregnant cows, they will take pleasure in 

 devouring stray articles of clothing with the pins or needles that 

 may be fixed in them. In districts, like Brittany, where cows 

 are habitually cared for by women, this danger is enhanced, and 

 in the vicinity of certain factories, like millinery establishments, 

 wire works, etc., where sharp pointed bodies are scattered, the 

 number of cows perishing from this cause is remarkable. 



2d. The meshes of the reticulum. The long villi of the rumen 

 and the folds of the manifolds and rennet, yield readily to foreign 

 bodies of all kinds and coming from any direction. But the 

 alveoli within alveoli of the reticulum are calculated to entangle 

 any solid body, and above all any pointed body, and hold it firmly. 

 If any such pointed body once has both ends engaged in two 

 alveoli, they must necessarily impinge with more or less force on 

 the mucous membrane, under the movements of the stomach and 

 its changes of size and form. In such a case the more pointed 

 end will prick more deeply and the constantly repeated wound 

 determines inflammation, ulceration and finally the formation of 

 a track or fistula in which the foreign body lies. The direction 

 will depend on the position of the sharper end, and if that is 

 downward or backward it either fails to do harm, or it opens a 

 track by which the body escapes through the wall of the abdo- 

 men or into an intestine, but such a course is rare. When on 

 the other hand the sharp point is directed forward, its active 

 progress is favored by the constant respiratory movements of the 

 diaphragm and the beats of the heart. 



3d. The anterior wall of the reticulum is in direct contact 

 with the diaphragm, and the inspiratory contractions of that 

 muscle causes a series of compressions on the sharp point of the 

 foreign body, and hastens the inflammation and absorption. In 

 the next place the convexity of the diaphragm in expiration is 

 such that it comes in direct contact with the pericardium, and 

 thus the shock of the systole is experienced over the point, 

 multiplying the pressures by four or five times the number and 

 keeping up a rapid succession of beats, which determine the 

 progress of the foreign object in the direction from which these 

 pulses are received. 



Of other routes sometimes taken by foreign bodies the follow- 

 ing may be named: — into the larynx (Pallart) ; oesophagean wall 



