612 LANCASHIRE VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
Phlebitis is also likely to be produced by the too frequent open- 
ing of the same orifice within the first twelve hours after bleeding. 
Spontaneous cases. — It is well known that spontaneous cases of 
phlebitis occasionally happen in the human subject, and that pus is 
sometimes secreted from the lining membrane without any opening 
having been made in the vein, and this is carried into the circulation, 
and produces disease of the lungs, &c. Does this ever occur in the 
horse ? 
I well remember being in the dissecting-room at London, when 
a Colonel Martin kindly fetched me to look at a five-year-old horse 
that was brought to the College to be examined, and that had 
obstruction in each of the jugulars, and no blood flowed through 
them. The horse had been in the owner’s hands from a colt. So 
at least the servant said. 
Course of the disease. — Mr. Percivall says, “ that he believes it 
(the inflammation) will invariably be found to proceed in that di- 
rection in which the vein is blocked up,” and that “in the horse 
it extends towards the head contrary to the course of the circula- 
tion ; that in the human subject it attacks the vein in its course to 
the heart, and that it is a principle laid down by surgeons that 
obliteration is always found next to the heart.” 
I believe, however, that medical authors do not lay this down as 
an invariable rule. Mr. Hunter says that he has found it above 
and below the incision, both in the human subject and in the horse. 
In three cases that Mr. Abernethy describes the inflammation 
extended as low as the wrist. Dr. Lee says, “ When inflammation 
takes place in the arm after venesection, it may proceed upwards in 
the direction of the heart, or towards the distal extremity of the 
limb, contrary to the current of the blood,” and that “the same 
circumstance takes place in crural phlebitis, originating in the 
branches of the internal iliac vein, the inflammation extending 
upwards along the common iliac towards the vena cava, or in the 
opposite direction from that trunk to the branches along the external 
iliac and femoral veins to the thigh and leg.” 
Professor Lizars says “it may extend both ways.” 
On looking over several volumes of the Lancet I found only four 
cases. 
In vol. ix, page 3/6, a fatal case that was under the care of Mr. 
Lawrence is recorded. The principal disease was below the elbow, 
and extended quite down to the hand. 
In vol. xi, page 715, is related another case, in which the atten- 
tion of the same gentleman was requested, and here the disease was 
as bad below as above the elbow. 
The other two cases were principally above the elbow, but the 
inflammation also extended below the joint. 
In the horse the disease occasionally extends downwards. A case 
in proof of this is related by Mr. Riddle in the 7th volume of the 
Veterinarian. The inflammation extended along the whole of the neck. 
The late Mr. Hales, of Oswestry, with whom I was apprentice, in 
a most interesting and valuable paper in vol. viii of the Veteri- 
