154 PROGRESS OF VETERINARY SCIENCE AND ART. 
pulse, &c. Reichte recommended the animal to be destroyed. 
He found sarcomatous growths projecting from the auriculo- 
ventricular valves, and a peculiar form of obliteration of the 
pulmonary artery, owing to a similar growth from the 
semilunar valves, so that the circulation of blood was ren- 
dered impossible. 
Curdt has described another case of degeneration of the 
heart in an ox. This communication is published in the 
c Mecklenburgh Journal’ and in the c Repertorium.’ The 
animal presented symptoms like those of pleuro-pneumonia, 
and was slaughtered. The lungs were found to contain 
abscesses, tubercles, &c. ; and in the seat of the heart were 
found lardaceous growths, amounting to sixty-two pounds in 
weight, and on cutting into them there appeared in the middle 
the healthy heart, but much diminished in size. No trace of 
pericardium could be found. 
Three instances of instantaneous death are recorded as 
occurring in cows as the result of cysts and abscesses in the 
substance of the heart. Laubreaun found in one of these 
cows three cysts of the size of hazelnuts, all situated in the 
septum; in another cow there was a cyst in the septum about 
the size of a lemon, and in both cases the blood in the heart 
was fluid. Leblanc found; in the third case, an abscess 
containing from three to four ounces of pus in the left wall of 
the heart, and an exudation on the surface of the heart, with 
about two pounds of serum in the pericardium. It was 
uncertain whether death was immediately caused by the 
condition of the blood in the cavities, or in consequence of 
the morbid products in the substance of the heart. 
The other interesting cases recorded were published in the 
Veterinarian , the one by Mr. Blakenay, and another, a very 
singular one, by Mr. Parker. 
An essay of mine was published in the Lyons Veterinary 
Journal , on ruptures of the azygos vein in oxen killed, as they 
generally are in the Italian slaughter-houses, by division of 
the spinal cord. My brother has drawn attention to the 
facts I observed, in his c Researches in Pathological Anatomy/ 
at page 12 ; and the following paragraph is transcribed nearly 
verbatim from my brother’s work : I first observed in the 
slaughtered animals, that when the thorax was opened, cir- 
cumscribed clots existed between the pleura and vertebrae 
covering the azygo-vein ; the blood sometimes trickling 
beneath the serous membrane. On dissection, jagged rup- 
tures of the blood-vessel were discovered. My friends Pro- 
fessors Maffei and Balboni, having sought from me an ex- 
planation of the fact, I suggested that the instant the animals 
