464 DISEASES OF THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM. 



3. Suppurative myocarditis (abscess of the heart) is mainly observed 

 ill pyemia, in puerperal metritis of the cow, in omphalo-phlebitis 

 of the foal (Venaert). Sometimes abscesses of the heart are very 

 small, miliary and disseminated throughout the connective tissue, 

 where we see them proliferate until their dimensions are that of 

 a hazel-nut or a chestnut ; they are generally caused by embolic 

 infarct (metastatic myocarditis). Abscesses of the heart have been 

 observed in the horse and the ox ; in this latter they may undergo 

 caseous transformation and becoQie incrusted with calcareous salts 

 (" ossification of the heart''). 



Cardiosclerosis is not always developed at the expense of the 

 inflammatory process ; according to Ziegler, it would frequently be 

 the expression of myomalacia (softeniug of the myocardium) which 

 IS consecutive to necrobiosis by cardiac anemia, and which has often 

 been designated under the name of parenchymatous myocarditis. 

 Oardiac myomalacia occurs generally as a consequence of hemor- 

 rhagic infarctus which is produced in the course of an arterio- 

 sclerous or embolic process ; this infarctus leads sucessively, within 

 a limited territory, to arterial anemia, softening, caseification, re- 

 sorption of detritus, and finally cicatricial induration. In circum- 

 scribed centres of cerebral softeniug and in renal infarctus, the 

 interstitial connective cicatrices are formed in the same way. 



Degenerations of the myocardium observed in the course of infec- 

 tious diseases represent, so to speak, the first phase of myocarditis, 

 w^ith which they are closely related, but they are much more 

 frequent than myocarditis itself. Among these alterations we may 

 mention: turbid tumefaction, fatty and granulous degeneration, 

 etc. The myocardium, which is flaccid, friable, as if cooked, shows 

 an abnormal coloration, but the cellular infiltration is wanting. 

 The symptoms are similar to those of myocarditis. All these 

 degenerative lesions lead to atony of the heart. 



Symptoms. The symptoms consist especially of a functional 



cular tissue was overrun by a partial sclerosis located upon the pericardial side, and 

 penetrated in some places the thickness of the ventricle, reaching even as far as the 

 endocardium. The muscular fibres had undergone either colloid degeneration or 

 fatty degeneration, with a return to the embryonic form in both (Revue Vét., 1890). 

 Quite recently we have seen, in a horse affected by chronic valvular endocarditis, a 

 good specimen of interstitial myocarditis, which was characterized by the presence 

 of bands and islands of fibrinous connective tissue disseminated in the thickness of 

 the walls of the left ventricle, and which were accompanied by degenerative altera- 

 tions and atrophy of the muscular bundles or fibres. — n. d. t. 



