LIVERPOOL VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
85 
a condition in which certain clearly defined and circumscribed parts 
of the lung tissue undergo a process of disorganization and decay. 
The whole of the substance of the lungs may be in a diseased condi- 
tion from subacute inflammation ; but it is only in particular spots 
that we find indurated lumps called tubercles, at various distances 
from each other, varying in size probably from a marble to a large 
apple. In some of these tubercles a blackish, bloody, and foetid 
matter is found, in others pure pus, in others again a sort of inspis- 
sated matter of a cheeselike consistency. In other words, the tex- 
ture of the structure is just changing into matter or breaking up. 
Tubercles, originally distinct from each other, approximate as they 
increase in size, and ultimately unite and form tumours in the centre 
of the inflamed part ; the products effused during the process of in- 
flammation will also begin after a time to lose their vitality, to 
break up and liquefy. This may take place about three or four 
weeks after the horse has been laid up ; textures so highly organized 
as the pulmonary are under the influence of typhoid pneumonia for 
only a short time, are almost certain to undergo active decomposition, 
apparently spontaneous softening and disorganization ; this is indi- 
cated by fetid breath suddenly manifesting itself. Professor Dick 
considered that abscesses within the lungs are generally of rapid 
formation. They may be caused by an ordinary acute attack of in- 
flammation, and occasionally by epidemic catarrh progressing in an 
insidious or obscure form ; but the most frequent cause of all is a 
latent condition dependent upon unhealthy diathesis produced by 
hard work, frequent exposure to cold and neglect, in conjunction 
with constantly standing in a warm, foul, close, and perhaps un- 
drained stable, where the atmosphere is impregnated with that which 
is injurious to health and destructive to life. It may also be pro- 
duced by pyaemia. 
I have said vomicae may be the result of inflammatory action in 
the lungs ; these beautiful spongy organs, composed of elastic and 
contractile tissues, which are never at rest day nor night so long as life 
lasts, whose function is perpetually to eject carbonic acid gas from 
the system, and to produce oxygenated blood ; these vital organs are 
now suffering from a debilitated state of the capillaries, and an 
excited action in the arterial vessels ; or, in other words, perverted 
natural action. This stage may have been, nay usually is, preceded 
by a simple cold ; the first divergence from health observed is, that 
the horse is feverish, a state which is closely followed by sore throat, 
cough, and nasal discharge. In the great majority of these cases a 
subsidence of the disease takes place in a week or ten days, and 
complete restoration to health is the result. But some few of these 
ordinary cases do not terminate thus; they hang on hand; the fever 
continues, the pulse is not small, but it is soft and weak, GO to 72 
beats per minute ; mouth not very hot ; membranes discoloured. 
Occasionally clammy tongue and foul odour from mouth, breathing 
slightly accelerated, and a tendency to cold ears and cold skin 
exists. The animal eats very sparingly ; day after day he is found 
in a stationary condition ; there is a heaviness and a languor about 
