110 INJECTING PUS INTO THE VEINS OF ANIMALS. 
“A mixture of two drachms and a scruple of good pus, 
diluted with an equal quantity of tepid water, was injected,” 
says Mr. Gamgee, “into the right jugular vein. I had no 
sooner done this, and transfixed the lips of the orifice with a 
pin, than the horse began to heave at the flanks, after which 
he staggered a few moments, and fell ; when down, he 
breathed laboriously thirty-eight times in the minute, and, 
with scarcely a struggle, and not more than two minutes’ 
delay, expired. . . . The jugular vein and the right cavities of 
the heart were filled with dark-coloured currant jelly like 
clotted blood From the manner the experiment was 
conducted, the introduction of air into the vein was im- 
possible. On examining the blood from the right side of 
the heart, I discovered on it a very large number of cor- 
puscles, measuring, on an average, one tw o- thousandth of an 
inch in diameter, and having nuclei not distinguishable from 
those of pus- cells. So numerous were they, that it was 
impossible to count them.” 
As the horse has only one jugular vein on each side, the 
blood returns to the heart through it, when unobstructed, 
wdth something like the same velocity that it passes from the 
heart through the carotid artery: a period of four or five 
seconds is the utmost time that the blood w T ould, in the 
ordinary course of the circulation, take to pass through the 
heart from the jugular vein; yet, in Mr. Gamgee’s experi- 
ment, the pus is found mixed with the clotted blood in the 
heart, after an interval of two minutes, without reckoning the 
time consumed in completing the experiments, or the interval 
during which the circulation may have gone on after apparent 
death. By w hat pow T er, then, 1 ask, w T ere these pus-globules 
detained in the heart? and what was the cause of the sudden 
death w hich occurred in this case ? 
This experiment of Mr. Gamgee’s is the more interesting, 
as it coincides exactly with an experiment recorded in a very 
able and interesting paper by Dr. Mackenzie, in the last 
volume of the * Medico- Chirurgical Transactions. 5 At page 
200, Dr. Mackenzie states : “ The femoral vein of a dog was 
exposed on the 15th of June, 1852, and half an ounce of pus, 
slightly diluted with water, was slowly injected into it 
towards the heart. In rather more than a minute, the dog 
seemed distressed; the abdominal and respiratory muscles 
became convulsed; and respiration ceased within tw r o or 
three minutes. On making a post-mortem examination 
shortly afterwards, the vena cava and the abdominal and 
thoracic veins were found generally turgid with blood. On 
opening the right iliac vein, a stream of dark coloured fluid 
