A CASE OF VENTRAL HERNIA. 
19 
the horse's head on the ground, I ought to have foreseen the im- 
possibility of the worm escaping with the watery humour, which 
is the object of incision; for when the head is confined to the 
ground, the water naturally gravitates to the posterior chamber of 
the eye, consequently neither water nor worm can escape by in- 
cising in that posture. It will be needless to add, that the suc- 
cessful mode of operation is to insert the lancet while the horse is 
standing. If possible, the incision should be made while the worm 
is floating on the surface of the eye, and a little beneath it, by 
which it will immediately pass out with the water. Some care is 
required not to make the incision too extensive, as the crystalline 
lens may also escape, which would cause immediate blindness. 
I have heard that mercurial applications to the eye will destroy 
the worm, which being absorbed, the vision will not be impaired. 
However extraordinary this mode of cure may appear, it is not so 
much so as the disease ; and I conceive it worthy of trial, as the 
texture of the eye would not be so much deranged as by incising. 
I have been informed by many gentlemen, that weakness in the 
loins frequently succeeds the extraction of the worm, which I be- 
lieve ; but I very much doubt whether the one is a consequence 
of the other. It is possible that a relaxation of the nervous system 
may, however remotely, cause the worm in the eye, as it is a dis- 
ease confined to hot climates ; and as I firmly believe the weakness 
in the loins to be some paralytic affection of the spinal marrow or 
nerves, so I imagine it very probable that a horse, having had a 
worm in the eye from a relaxed system, will also be very subject 
to weakness in the loins. This does not argue any particular 
connexion between these complaints, or that one is the consequence 
of the other ; it only advances that the same habitual or remote 
cause may produce both. This is, however, entirely hypothesis, 
which I have presumed to venture, and which, at all events, I 
conceive much more probable than that extracting the worm from 
the eye occasions a weakness in the loins. 
A CASE OF VENTRAL HERNIA. 
By Mr. S. G. Holmes, Ash. 
In July last I was requested by Mr. Collard, of Minster, to at- 
tend a yearling colt with ventral hernia. 
It was situated posteriorly to the umbilicus, and was about three 
inches in circumference. The protruded intestine would have filled 
a half-pint measure. 
