472 CASE OF G ASTRO-ENTERITIS IN THE HORSE. 
sphacelated. The mucous lining membrane, throughout its whole 
extent, was very much diseased, and presented an appearance of 
a light slate colour or dusky hue. The liver did not offer any 
appearance of disease of a chronic character, but was slightly 
inflamed; the lungs were very much congested; the heart and 
pericardium were perfectly healthy. 
My motive in sending this case to you is to shew the difficulties 
with which the veterinary practitioner has to contend in forming 
a diagnosis as to the probable situation or nature of the disease 
under which he beholds his patient labouring ; for although, on the 
post-mortem examination of this animal, there was such a mass of 
disease developed, yet, until within a week of his death, he was 
fast improving in condition, and doing his work so gaily and easily 
that no one could possibly have imagined that any thing like dis- 
ease, much less of so important an organ, was lingering about him. 
During the time of his illness, also, there was a total absence of 
any symptoms that would indicate the extensive mischief going 
on in the stomach and intestinal canal. He stood quiet and stupid, 
occasionally brightening up, moving about his box, and walking 
into the yard. There was no lying down and getting up again ; 
no looking round at his flanks ; no partial perspirations — not even 
pawing of the litter. 
The nearest approach to a correct diagnosis that could be formed 
from the rapidity and smallness of the pulse, together with the 
highly injected state of the membranes, was hepatitis : instead of 
which we find a large irregular and unhealthy-looking ulcer in the 
villous portion of the stomach, with hard and abrupt edges, nearly 
resembling the ulcers of glanders ; extensive disease of the mucous 
membrane of the large and small intestines, approaching in seve- 
ral parts, but not particularly in the larger intestines, to a state 
of sphacelus : innumerable ulcers spread over the whole of this 
surface, varying from the size of a pea, where they remained 
separate, to that of a crown-piece, where they had run into each 
other: and yet the subject of all this disease continued standing, 
without any apparent suffering, with the exception of the total 
loss of appetite, to the last moment; and then fell as he might 
have done in a fatal case of inflammation of the lungs, and expired 
without a struggle. 
