254 
A CASE OF APOPLEXY IN A HORSE. 
sliced nearly to a level with the corpus callosum : its substance cut 
firm, but presented interiorly, as yet, nothing extraordinary. The 
lateral sinuses were opened ; they both contained fluid, but that on the 
left or near side held double the quantity of the right, and yet was 
by no means full. Slicing the brain further down, to a level quite 
with the opened sinuses, there came into view, within the left 
hemisphere of the cerebrum, a dark, purplish, bloody place, which, 
on farther examination, was found to extend from the middle of 
the external or lateral border, inwards, towards the central part of 
the hemisphere, into which, bloody spots — speckling the medullary 
matter around the black patch — quite extended. The blackened 
portion, which consisted of leafy clots of coagulated blood, in- 
termingled with the medullary matter, the latter being in a softened 
condition, occupied more than a cubic inch of the substance of 
the brain, and was shaded off internally, as I said before, by me- 
dullary matter, containing no extravasated blood, but full of large 
black points or spots. 
It appears the left or near was the side upon which the horse fell 
in his stall, when seized with the fit. Could this effusion of blood 
into the cerebrum have been the result of his fall 1 I should say, 
certainly not ; else what caused the fit ] And, again, he fell upon 
litter; moreover, there was no external mark, either in the skin, or 
the bone, or in the dura mater, or upon the brain, to shew that the 
fall had injured him. Lastly, the substance of the brain contiguous 
to, or, as it were, intermingled with the effused blood, had become 
changed, softened, stained. 
My notions about the case are, that, from high feeding, and no 
work, and from bowels suffered to become constipated, a plethoric 
condition of the cerebral vessels had become engendered, which 
had ended (the horse being an aged one) in rupture and effusion, 
the part wherein the rupture happened being, probably, in a 
previous state of disease. Had the case been one arising from 
external injury, I might have entertained some hopes of a survival; 
as it was, I had none*. 
* A case in the third volume of my Hippopathology will shew that, when 
such symptoms arise from a blow or a fall, recovery may ensue. 
