576 COM PTE RENDU OF THE 
exercise of the chest on the side which comes in contact with the 
ground. 
In cases of pneumonia, this impediment, united with that resulting 
from the presence of inflammation in the lungs, renders the respira- 
tion oppressed to suffocation, so that the animal finds itself totally 
unable to maintain a lateral recumbent position for any length of 
time. Ought not, then, a prolonged recumbent position, unpro- 
ductive of evil, and unattended by greatly accelerated respiration, 
occurring during pneumonia, to be regarded as a favourable 
symptom ] It is an indication of resolution in the lung, a precursor 
of convalescence. On the other hand, repeated attempts to lie 
down, while the evident uneasiness or pain occasioned by the re- 
cumbent position compels the patient to rise again very shortly, 
and prevents him from taking that rest which he evidently requires 
so much, are most unfavourable signs ; they indicate great pros- 
tration of strength, and at the same time demonstrate the 
intensity of the disease. The desire after fluids is a febrile 
symptom which may serve to throw a light on the prognostic. 
When fever is intense, patients will empty the vessel of water at 
a draught ; but so soon as the febrile action decreases, and appetite 
returns, they are satisfied to agitate the water with their lips, and 
plunge the nose and muzzle into it, in order to seek at the bottom 
for particles of food. 
4. In pneumonia in the horse, it almost invariably happens that 
congestion takes place in the inferior part of the lung, and to this 
succeeds inflammation, and all the various alterations which follow 
in its train. May not this species of predilection exercised by 
pneumonia arise from the natural fluidity of the blood in this 
animal 'l 
The absence of respiratory vesicular sound is the first symptom 
indicative of congestion or of inflammation of the lungs : in point 
of fact, the pulmonary vesicules disappear, or become completely 
effaced, while the blood, impeded in its course, stagnates in the 
capillaries and their coverings, or becomes suffused within the cel- 
lular tissue which isolates them ; and the serosity which separates 
itself from the blood, and the globules which it conveys with it, 
infiltrate the pulmonary tissue, which is no longer, properly speak- 
ing, any thing but a mass of fibrine and albumen, combined with 
the parenchymatous tissue of the organ. The air no longer pene- 
trating this impermeable mass, no sound can be produced ; and per- 
cussion of the chest, practised on a level w ith it, only produces a 
dull resonance. 
This condensation of the pulmonary tissue, however, by the 
fibrine and albumen of the coagulated blood in the vascular net- 
