MISCELLANEA. 
177 
From this time the animal seemed to be in great danger, or lost 
without resource. 1 determined, however, in spite of all these sad 
prognostics, to give a strong aloetic purge, to determine, if possi- 
ble, a favourable crisis. I had tried this before, and without ef- 
fect ; I would not, however, despair a second attempt. A vast 
quantity of offensive excrement was voided. The fcetor was al- 
most beyond conception. In the course of four days there was a 
marked change for the better ; it, however, lasted not long. These 
abundant evacuations gradually exhausted him. At the expiration 
of twelve days more it was evident to the true observer that he 
must be lost. He was thought, indeed, to be better. He ate five or 
six pounds of hay. He ruminated it for a little while. The eva- 
cuations seemed to have regained their former consistence and na- 
tural colour ; but this continued only a little while. He refused 
every kind of nourishment — he/aised himself with great difficulty 
— he carried his head very highly — the nostrils were strangely di- 
lated. In a few hours a strange engorgement began by degrees to 
extend itself, and spread from the middle of the neck to the um- 
bilicus ; on the following day it had attacked the whole of the ab- 
domen, and in the next morning its feeble efforts ceased to be 
of any use. 
The opening on the same day presented a little derangement on 
the side of the neck that had been infiltrated. It was with the 
viscera of the abdominal cavity. The stomach and intestines were 
perfectly empty. The left lobe of the lungs contained three con- 
cretions, of the size of a nut, on its inferior border. The pericar- 
dium contained at least three pounds of serosity, but on examining 
the heart we found a strange body protruding, and deeply buried 
in the tissue of this organ. It was with great difficulty that it 
could be extracted ; very considerable force was used. It was a 
sewing-needle torn from the side of the heart. The parts of the 
tissue of the heart in which the needle had been first buried were 
transformed into a hard and scirrhous substance. 
Reflections. — M. Dupuy has already published several ana- 
logous facts, which lead us to think that these accidents, deter- 
mined by one cause purely mechanical, are not so rare as they are 
sometimes thought to be. It is of consequence to multiply them, in 
order to render the diagnosis more easy. 
The state of the flank is remarkable. The movement has much 
analogy with that which characterises thick wind in the horse. 
The frequency of lesions of the heart, by reason of some mecha- 
nical cause connected with cattle, is easily explained, when the 
organization of these animals, and the respective situations of the 
second stomach, the pericardium, and the heart, are known. 
VOL. XVIII. 
