224 PROGRESS OF VETERINARY SCIENCE AND ART. 
deaths from ruptured colon will occur in the hands of the 
most experienced and best informed practitioners, for the 
very reason that they may often be called in late, or frus- 
trated in their attempts to do good. 
There is a point of interest mentioned above, to which the 
attention of practitioners must be drawn ; and, like an artist 
representing a battle-field, we drop on the episode that 
attracts attention, excites, and is not deficient in instruction. 
If, like in the artist’s battle-field, there is confusion in the 
background, there are many stray incidents, as episodes, 
related in the history of the case of ruptured colon just 
recorded, that furnish much for reflection. We there find 
mention of “ Sensibility and insensibility of the loins.” 
Scarcely a dealer, and not few veterinarians in England must 
have noticed that when a Frenchman buys a horse, he lifts 
his rug forwards, and lightly pinches him over the spine. 
The dealer, in his ignorance, does it to ascertain if the horse 
can flex his loins, if it be anchylosed or not ; but rigidity of 
this region may, and does occur, independently of any affec- 
tion of the spine. I believe, with Rey, that oftentimes the 
degree of sensibility of the lumbar region is a better indica- 
tion of a horse’s actual state than the pulse or other signs at 
our command. If there be any constitutional derangement 
or functional disturbance of any special viscus, the 
horse tells it directly, according to the degree of that 
perverted state, by the greater or less rigidity of his loins, by 
the greater or less feeling evinced when this region is com- 
pressed. In many cases have I observed that as a horse got 
worse the back became more stiff; and on the contrary, this 
strikingly indicated any amelioration, even if other bad symp- 
toms persisted, but which, how ever, yielded in their turn. 
One thermometer is more delicate than another, and so can 
w r e rely for the detection of shades of difference in the state 
of an animal more on one symptom than pn another. I have 
no hesitation in asserting that often — not invariably — passing 
the hand along the back will tell us more than the breathing 
and pulse, more than auscultation or the ascertaining the 
temperature of various parts of the body. 
If I have said that in Lyons they often cannot purge 
a horse, I can in return say, that the admirable system 
adopted for clinical instruction — the manner each student 
is made to observe and look for himself — the method he 
is made to adopt in preserving records of cases — far, 
very far, outbalance any little defects ; and I hope that 
I may live to see such practices followed out— but fol- 
lowed out efficiently — here, with such efforts to ameliorate 
