RUPTURE OF THE DIAPHRAGM. 
29 
urine, gave him a diuretic ball that he procured from an 
adjacent shop; but in consequence of his pains increasing in 
frequency and acuteness, I was requested to see him in the 
evening, at which time I found him lying in a comfortable 
position, with a cheerful countenance, pulse of a normal 
standard, respiration undisturbed, and the temperature of his 
body and extremities perfectly natural; a train of symptoms 
that impressed my mind with the conviction that he was 
labouring under some slight functional derangement of the 
digestive organs. I gave him an anodyne draught consist- 
ing of — 
Spt. iEther. Nitric., §ij ; 
Tiuct. Opii ver., %j. 
and an aperient ball, containing five drachms of aloes, &c., and 
promised to see him again after the lapse of two or three hours. 
When I returned, he was standing up, to all appearance free 
from pain, and seemed inclined to eat ; consequently I 
ordered him a bran mash, and tepid water acl libitum , with a 
good bed in a loose box, and felt no hesitation in leaving him 
till the morrow. At the dawn of the morning, I was sum- 
moned to see him again, his sufferings having increased to 
an intense and alarming extent, evinced by quick breathing, 
and a greatly accelerated pulse, a tympanitic state of the 
abdomen, a cold and clammy sweat bedewing his body, and 
an amount of struggling attending each paroxysm that ren- 
dered him dangerous to approach, and dreadful to look at. 
He had urinated once or twice during the night, but had not 
voided a particle of dung from the commencement of the 
attack. I now bled him, applied some blistering ointment to 
the inferior part of his abdomen, gave him — • 
01. Lini, ^xiv, et 01. Tereb., ^iijj in haustus. 
I examined him per rectum, and found the gut, as far as I 
could reach, quite empty. I need not say that I looked 
upon the case at this juncture as being in great and imminent 
danger, and prepared the owner for a fatal termination ; 
believing, as I then did, that some serious lesion of the abdo- 
minal viscera had taken place. In the afternoon, when dis- 
solution was close at hand, we had him destroyed, as his 
appearance ^vas truly distressing; his rectum having been 
forced out to an enormous extent by the violence of his 
struggling. 
I found, on making a post mortem examination of him, that 
a rupture of the whole extent of the cordiform or tendinous 
portion of the diaphgram had taken place, in a transverse 
