456 PROGRESS OF VETERINARY SCIENCE AND ART. 
My brother has most carefully studied several cases of 
suppurative phlebitis in man ; ancl in numerous experiments 
that we undertook on pyaemia, I had occasion to induce it in 
animals. 
I believe that the first drops of ichor that appear at the 
bleeding orifice, very rarely, if ever, proceed from the vein, 
but from the liquefaction or puriform degeneration of lymph 
around it. The active inflammatory action prevents adhesion, 
and the closure of the venous orifice ; but the lips of the 
latter are, by simple approximation, closed to the passage of 
blood from within, or to the entrance of pus from without. 
The pus forces its way into the vein if the pin is not early 
removed, ulceration of the edges of the venous wound occurs, 
and haemorrhage results. If injections into the vein of pus 
and of putrid matter be performed neatly and dexterously, it 
is excessively difficult to produce inflammation provided the 
vein injected, like the jugular of our domestic animals, be 
free to the passage onwards of the materials. In injecting 
the mesenteric veins pus is rarely thoroughly washed off, as 
gravitation favours its retention, and then the vein that 
must be tied inflames and suppurates, but the pus is then 
limited by blood-clots and adhesive inflammation around. 
The limiting by blood-clots is a secondary process, generally 
imperfect, that I never witnessed in the jugulars, but only 
where pus was retained by simple gravitation. Water 
colours in my brother’s possession, that I made from speci- 
mens he dissected, prove how, even in phlebitis in man, a vein 
may be full of pus — coagulated blood lying in the pus 
instead of around it, and the attempted formation of plugs 
being abortive. These facts — the merit of the discovery of 
which entirely rests with my brother, Mr. Joseph Sampson 
Gamgee — I mention as illustrating the subject on which I 
am commenting, and bearing as they do on the method of 
death in suppurative phlebitis, in man or animals, by the 
development of secondary abscesses or purulent infection. 
Suppurative inflammation of the jugulars, and death by 
pyaemia, may, according to my notion of the primary seat of 
suppuration, be generally prevented. The success in the 
treatment of phlebitis amongst judicious veterinarians in 
Great Britain proves this inference just and tenable. 
Returning to M. Rey’s memoir, we pass to the con- 
sideration of surgical means recommended for the treatment 
of phlebitis. There are five that he discusses : 1st, blister- 
ing; 2d, ligature; 3d, the actual cautery; 4th, free inci- 
sions into the inflamed vein ; 5th, extraction of the vessel. 
It is to establish the preeminence of the latter that Rey 
