456 Veterinary Medicine. 



Digestive disorder may be present, shown by liquidity and 

 foetor of the stools, passage of foul gases, black color of the 

 droppings, periods of constipation alternating with diarrhoea, 

 and impairment of appetite and rumination. 



In implication of the myocardium and endocardium, the func- 

 tional disorders of the heart are more marked, palpitations, ine- 

 quality and irregularity of the beats, and intermissions are to 

 be looked for, also blowing heart murmurs from valvular disease 

 or thrombi, and finally venous pulse in the jugulars. The 

 entrance of septic microbes and the formation of heart clots, 

 often entail embolism or abscess in distant parts or organs. Or 

 the fistula, opening into the heart cavities, allows an escape of 

 blood into the reticulum and through this into the stomachs and 

 intestines, and incidentally admitting hosts of septic microbes 

 into the circulating blood. Gastric and intestinal fermentations 

 ensue, with tympanies and foetid diarrhoea. In the rare cases in 

 which the patient survives to suffer in this way, it now speedily 

 dies from impaired heart function, pysemia or septicaemia. 



Percussion gives valuable indications in advanced stages. 

 It brings out indications of tenderness and notably grunting 

 with each blow, in ratio with the force of the impact. It 

 exposes a large area of non-resonance, of a conical form, with 

 its base turned upward and backward, and extending from 

 about the middle of the fifth or sixth rib back to the diaphragm 

 near its centre. Sometimes, in advanced stages, the presence of 

 gas in the pericardium may give a drum-like resonance to the 

 antero superior part of this cone. The conical outline, too, may 

 be modified by a widening out below in case of hydro-pericardium. 



Auscultation may show a distant or muffled heart sound, with 

 at times early friction sound, or the later splashing sounds 

 already referred to, but much more characteristically, in given 

 cases, the special sound caused by the passage of gas through the 

 liquid in the fistula. This varies in different cases, with the 

 size of the canal and the abundance of the liquid and gas. It 

 has been variously likened to the sound of clack-clack, glut-glut, 

 like the sound of water flowing intermittently from an inverted 

 bottle, and especially if into a vessel of sonorous qualities ; like 

 the metallic tinkling of drops of water dropping into a vessel half 

 full, or upon a marble table; or even the sound produced by 



