672 
PERICARDITIS OF THE LARGE RUMINANTS. 
corresponding secretary, in his letter to Professor Dick, to which I have 
already twice referred, says, ‘ If you have any friend for whom you wish to 
provide comfortably, here is a favorable opportunity for your doing so/ I 
have no wish, gentlemen, for such ‘ provision’ as is here indicated : all I ask 
for is such a share of employment in the calling which you sought me to 
come here and practise, as may enable me to live by it. Nor do I ask this 
without offering you, as I have endeavoured to show, advantages in ex- 
change, which you can nowhere else obtain : but do not take this on my 
word, look into the matter yourselves, observe the number of horses crippled 
in the different ways I have named, and, if fortunate in your own having 
escaped, reflect that it may not be always so, but that he is as liable as 
others to be the victim of a bad system. Ask if art and science, where 
these have most been cultivated, can do anything to remedy or prevent such 
wholesale mischief, and, if you find that they can, give them at least a trial, 
and do not be content to live fifty years behind the rest of the world, even 
in the treatment of your horses’ feet. 
“ Gentlemen, 
“ I have the honour to be, 
“ Your most obedient servant, 
“ M. A. Cuming, V. S. 
The plates illustrating Mr. Cuming’s improvements in 
their practice of shoeing, plainly point out to them the course 
they ought to pursue. 
Foreign Department. 
NOTES ON THE PERICARDITIS OE THE LARGE DOMESTIC 
RUMINANTS, WITH REFLECTIONS, &c. 
By M. Mathieu, V.S. at Ancy-le-Franc, (Yonne), &c. 
The little information we possess on the pericarditis of the 
larger domestic ruminants, has determined me to publish 
some notes I took of this disease five or six years ago. I say 
notes and not observations since they are collected from a 
succession of incomplete fragmentary papers composed in a 
hurry near the patients, which it has been impossible for me 
to revise. 
The causes of pericarditis are nearly the same as those of 
pleurisy, peritonitis, and inflammation of other serous mem- 
branes. Sudden impressions of cold upon the cutaneous 
surface, external violence, inflammation of the tissue of the 
heart and those of the pleurae, may sometimes give rise to 
pericarditis. By certain authors a special cause has been 
assigned for this disease. I am speaking of the penetration 
