Splenic Apoplexy. 
229 
blood arc increased in quantity, in otliers they are diminished, 
while in particular instances they have even undergone chemical 
changes. He would give some familiar examples. 
There is a disease called " black-leg" in cattle, which is the pest 
of many a farm in Yorkshire and in some other counties, and par- 
ticularly affects the rearer of young short-horn cattle. He had 
named this disease Hccmato-sepsis, because of the septic condition of 
the blood with which it was associated. Again, there is another 
malady, the "red water" in cattle, a disease to which cows are in 
some parts of the country more prone than oxen. This is a disease 
in which the blood undergoes peculiar changes, and in which the 
albumen and also the colouring matter of the red cells are evacuated 
through the medium of the kidneys, constituting the affection nov/ 
known as Hcemo-albuminuria. There are other maladies in which 
the blood is brought to a sudden standstill, sometimes in one jjart 
of the body and sometimes in another. Cases of the kind occurred 
last year in AVales, and they were truly described as examples of 
stagnations of the blood — Hcemostasia. Thus there are several affec- 
tions of a fatal character which primarily manifest themselves in 
certain changes of the blood, and he believed that splenic apoplexy 
was one of those affections. 
The causes which give rise to blood affections are various. For 
example, the fluid is likely to become contaminated by the inhala- 
tion of noxious materials, and in very many instances life has been 
suddenly cut short by such influences. Many persons have supposed 
that in sjjlenic apoplexy the changes originally wrought in the 
Hood are due to the inhalation of ordinary malaria. This opinion 
received some degree of support from the circumstance that the 
malady often showed itself during the summer months in those 
districts where there was a large tract of low-lying land, which, for 
want of under-draining, yielded deleterious gases, from the opera- 
tion of the sun's rays upon the decaying vegetable matter. But 
opposed to this view was the fact that, in the cases presently to be 
considered, the cattle were attacked on pastures which were in 
every respect like those on which others remained healthy, and 
from which they were separated merely by ordinary ditches. It 
was on two pastures in particular, and on two fanns, comprising 
iibout 300 acres of land each, that the disease had shown itself, and 
in neither instance could sufScient reasons be found to believe that 
malaria had anything to do with the malady. Again, a more 
extended view, including attacks of the disease in other districts, 
would show that these often occvxrred in the winter, and among 
animals which were being prepared for the butcher, fed largely on 
mangold, oilcake, &c., and kept under circumstances favourable to 
the continuance of health. 
Another common source of mischief is the direct conveyance into 
the digestive organs of materials, either in the shape of food or 
water, detrimental to the making of pure blood. Pathologists are 
often enabled to trace blood diseases directlj^ to the food ; but on 
-examination of the cases in question, there was no evidence that 
