118 
ON LEECHES. 
the wounds which the leeches had originally made in the thick- 
ness of the cheeks. Abscesses on these parts often result from the 
introduction of beards of barley ; and when, some time afterwards, 
these beards accumulate, and the foreign substances that I have 
mentioned unite in the species of pockets which these abscesses 
are not long in forming, all these causes produce, at length, a hard 
and very painful tumour, projecting on the exterior and greatly 
impeding the mastication. Besides this, the animal is perfectly 
disgusted by the excessively nauseous odour which fills his mouth. 
These tumours, which finish by turning into an abscess, more or 
less easily, though very slowly, furnish, when opened, a sanious 
and very foetid pus of a blackish colour, and mingled with very he- 
terogeneous matter in different stages of decomposition ; and where 
frequently are found more remnants of food corrupted by their stay 
in the wound and their mixture with the infected saliva, than 
matter proceeding from the putrid decomposition of the tissues of 
the part on which the abscess existed. In wounds of this nature 
large pieces of flesh often fall off of themselves, and constitute 
veritable gangrenous sloughs ; and the bottom of the wound is 
almost always of a greenish hue, and its edges present an infinity 
of fleshy buds, which some have taken for parts the retrenchment of 
which was necessary to render the wound less painful, while they 
were really endowed with very great sensibility. These fleshy buds 
were usually no other than the small salivary glands with which 
the interior texture of the cheeks are everywhere strewed, and 
which are rendered so apparent by the destruction of the cellular 
tissue with which they are naturally surrounded. This cellular 
tissue was destroyed and carried off by the abundant suppuration 
and by the putrid sloughs of the diseased part ; suppuration, the 
matter of which was usually so acrid, that it caused the hair to 
fall from the external part of the cheeks wherever it ran, and pro- 
duced excoriations of the skin. The nature of these fleshy buds 
always made me take great care in excising them ; for the rest, 
these wounds, as well as others which I have seen of the same 
nature, formed as well on the lips as underneath the chin and near 
the beard, are not long in entirely healing, in spite of the nature of 
their situation and the great loss of substance which they occasion. 
They may be frequently cleansed with port wine or lukewarm 
vinegar, until they are reduced to the state of a simple wound. 
Attention should be paid to cleanse them very frequently from the 
foreign bodies which, for a long time, and particularly during 
every meal, are getting into them, and after a little time the 
slightest attention to cleanliness will effect an entire cure. The 
termination of these tumours in suppuration was accelerated by 
the operation of fat and greasy bodies of which we made use in 
order to bring it as soon as possible to this termination, and which 
was really, in most of the cases, the only thing suitable to this sort 
