10 
REMARKS ON PARALYSIS ; WITH A CASE SUCCESS- 
FULLY TREATED BY STRYCHNIA. 
By J. Woodger, V.S., Market- street, Paddington. 
PARALYSIS is a disease to which the horse, in common with 
other domesticated animals, is occasionally the subject. We 
clearly understand it to arise from an injury or derangement of 
some part of the brain or spinal cord, or more probably from 
both : but beyond this we know very little. 
I am not acquainted with any class of diseases in which there 
exists a greater degree of obscurity respecting their real nature 
than there usually is in paralytic affections. Cases occur in 
which the affection can be plainly traced to such and such cause; 
whereas, on the other hand, we are called upon to treat nume- 
rous cases respecting whose nature we are perfectly in the dark. 
The same observation, perhaps, would apply to many other dis- 
eases; but I think not with so much force. To elucidate my 
observation, I will here narrate a case I have at present under 
treatment. 
A fine bay hunter, six years old, the property of a gentleman, 
was left by his attendant in a large airy box at night, apparently 
in his usual good health ; but the following morning was found 
standing with his hind legs wide apart, affected with paralysis in 
both hind quarters, and particularly in the off fore limb, to that 
extent that it was difficult and hazardous to move him without 
endangering his falling. And what renders the case more un- 
fortunate is, the circumstance of its being now about a month 
since my attention was first called to him, since which his im- 
provement, if any, is scarcely perceptible. And here the cause 
appears perfectly mysterious. He had not been doing work of 
any description for three or four weeks previously ; and had 
been moderately fed and regularly exercised. There was no 
loss of sensation in any of the affected parts. 
We see the disease in different subjects varying considerably 
in degree and intensity, most likely from the difference in the 
nature of the injury or derangement the nervous centres sustain. 
Human pathologists divide the disease into four kinds, — the 
Cullenian arrangement (see Hooper's Medical Dictionary), are 
as follow: — I. Paralysis partialis, 2. Paralysis hemiplegica. 
3. Paralysis paraplegica. 4. Paralysis venenata. 
The fourth form of the disease I have never had an opportu- 
nity of observing ; the other three forms I have repeatedly 
witnessed. The third form, or paraplegia, I believe to be of 
the most frequent occurrence in the horse ; whereas the second, 
