6 
DISEASE OF THE HEART OF A HORSE. 
Rationale of the Case. 
Commencing our analysis of the case with the important fact 
of the mare being ascertained to be sound — at least free from any 
detectible appearance of disease — in the month of April last, when 
she was purchased, and adverting to the next important fact, viz. 
that of her having been taken up from straw-yard in the following 
month (May) on account of having symptoms of an influenza, which, 
although in her case it appeared to terminate in strangles, in the 
cases of several others ended in disease of the synovial structures 
of the limbs; and adding to these two, the third link in the chain 
of her pathological history, viz. the fact of her rejection by the 
riding master in the month of August following on account of her 
manifesting “ weakness” in her hocks, although at the time she 
exhibited no signs whatever of ill health ; and, lastly, appending 
thereto the completing link, viz. her being taken up again from 
straw-yard (after having been turned out a third time) with symp- 
toms, not of weakness in her hocks alone, but of weakness, stiffness, 
and soreness, in all her joints (thought at the time to be in her 
spine) and with symptoms of constitutional disease in addition, 
which was at first obscure in its nature, but subsequently detected 
to be in the heart; — I say, connecting all these circumstances 
together — the state of soundness, the influenza prone to arthritic 
translation, the supervention of arthritic disease itself, followed by 
cardiac disease and death — have we not fair reason to come to the 
conclusion, that the arthritic disease, in which the influenza, as it 
would appear, terminated after the mare had been turned out again 
into straw-yard, had by metastasis (induced, perhaps, by the great 
quantity of wet weather she had been exposed to) struck inwardly 
upon her heart, produced in it sub-acute pericarditis, with endo- 
carditis, and so diseased and ultimately altered the structure of the 
valves? It might be supposed that, from the nature of the change 
from their natural structure the valves had undergone, the cardiac 
disease may have been of prior date to the arthritic affection. In 
answer to this, I would say, that nobody can tell how soon the mare 
might have felt her arthritic disease after she had been turned out 
in a healthy, or at all events convalescent, state, on the 2dth of May, 
though her general health and spirits had certainly at no time 
afterwards failed her, until the last time she was taken up into the 
stable. Any little stiffness she might have had in moving would 
probably, so long as she was loose in the straw-yard, have escaped 
notice ; so that, although the first intimation we had of any disease 
in her joints was the “ weakness” complained of by the riding 
master, it does not, as I said before, at all follow that she might 
