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TWO CASES OF DISEASE IN CATTLE PRODUCED 
BY SWALLOWING NEEDLES. 
By Herr Hildach, V.S., Quaritz . 
The lesions produced in the internal economy by foreign bodies 
swallowed by cattle with their fodder are either of such a nature 
as altogether to escape observation, or else they induce such 
organic disorder that no medical aid is adequate to reduce the 
disease thus engendered. At a post-mortem examination, needles 
or other foreign bodies are found in the stomach, of the presence 
of which no one symptom had caused the slightest suspicion. 
Where these foreign bodies are large and pointed, they give rise 
to most serious diseases, which, notwithstanding the most sci- 
entific treatment, slowly and inevitably produce death. Sewing 
or darning needles, which are the most dangerous of all foreign 
bodies that can be swallowed, pass down the gullet, and then 
force their way through the coat of the second stomach into the 
diaphragm, where they are pressed forwards by the motion of 
this in breathing, and the motion of the stomach while digesting. 
In this way they frequently pierce through the pericardium, in- 
jure the heart, and cause the carditis that supervenes to be fatal. 
Occasionally, but not so often, these foreign bodies pass on to the 
left wing of the lungs, and then the injuries inflicted on this deli- 
cate organ are sure to cause death. The cases are still more rare 
in which, passing behind the heart, they come into the pleuro- 
costalis, and pierce the intercostal muscles, and are then ejected 
in the matter formed by the abscesses arising from this lesion. 
These are the mildest, but, unfortunately, the cases most seldom 
met with. The course which the needle takes depends upon its 
position at the commencement of rumination : if it is situated above 
and towards the right, then will it reach the lungs ; if in the mid- 
dle, the heart will be the organ injured ; and if it is below and in- 
clined to the left, then it will pass towards the pleura or thorax. 
The following case is an example of the latter : — ■ 
On the 31st of October I was sent for by a miller, at Grabig, to 
look at his cow, which, from all account, had refused her food for 
some eight days past, and coughed a little. The milk, they also 
informed me, which on the previous day had been dried up, had, 
within the last twenty-four hours, come back, although not so 
plentifully as before. Two days before, a swelling had appeared 
on the ribs of the left side, which appeared to cause the animal 
very great pain. 
