564 OBLITERATION OF THE ARTERIES. 
terior aorta, and the vessels immediately connected therewith, 
which I took from a case of 
OBLITERATION OF THE ARTERIES. 
The patient was an aged horse and had been worked for 
many years on a farm, but was very small for such a pur- 
pose. In the winter of this year he was attacked with lame- 
ness, which however, subsided, and he continued to work 
until a month since, when I saw him. 
He was now observed to be lame in both hind legs, the 
near one being the worst. There was no heat, or enlarge- 
ment, nor in fact anything to account for the lameness. 
When submitted to exertion, his breathing would become 
accelerated, the pulse rise, and profuse perspiration bedew 
the surface of the body. If not taken from work, he would 
drop in the field, and evince symptoms of acute pain, but 
which usually subsided in about half an hour, when he would 
commence eating as if nothing had been amiss. 
I examined him about a week since, per rectum , and found 
a peculiar condition of the terminal portion of the posterior 
aorta. There was an evident want of force in the pulsation, 
and a hardened state of the vessel when pressed by the hand. 
I informed the owner that I feared there was a diseased state 
of the aorta, producing an obstruction to the free passage of 
the blood to the hind extremities. I was further convinced of 
this from the coldness of the hind limbs when compared 
with the other parts of the body. 
As he was an aged horse, and I considered it a hopeless 
case, he was destroyed. With the diseased vessels I send 
you the flexor tendons of the near hind leg, which you will see 
are of a peculiar colour. The tendons, however, of all the 
limbs were in the same condition. 
All the arteries supplying the anterior parts of the hind 
extremities were in the same plugged up state as those I 
send ; in fact, you might trace them as well as if they had 
been prepared by injection for dissection : the other vessels 
of the body were all healthy, as were also the viscera. 
The muscles of the limbs did not appear to have suffered. 
[These specimens arriving during our absence from town, 
we are indebted to Mr. Assistant-Professor Yarnell for the 
following report upon them, and likewise for the analogous 
case which is subjoined. 
The parts consisted of about three inches of the posterior 
aorta and its divisions into the internal and external iliacs 
