18 
ON SPASM OF THE DIAPHRAGM. 
are persons who do discern and can distinguish the scientific man 
from the charlatan and the pretender. The latter is always 
armed with some invaluable recipe — of course a secret — for the 
cure of every ailment horse-flesh is heir to, while the former dis- 
cusses the principles and objects to be obtained by the medicine 
he gives. 
If we talk of a discerning public, why we live in an age of 
empiricism, both in human and veterinary practice. When 
Morison can manage to amass £50,000 by gulling the commu- 
nity with the astounding virtues of his universal pills, composed 
of aloes, gamboge, and colocynth — while others, on being so 
told by an ignoramus, would as readily believe that their horse 
died from inflammation of the gall-bladder — verily one-half of the 
people are the dupes of imposture, and but few can be said to 
think at all. 
CASES AND OBSERVATIONS ON SPASM OF THE 
DIAPHRAGM. 
By Mr. W. A. Cartwright, V.S., Whitchurch, Salop. 
Case I. — On the 6th of Sept. 1842, about 3 p.m., I gave 3iij 
of aloes (Mocha et Barb.) to a five-vear-old blood pony, about 
twelve hands high, in fair condition, and that had ophthalmia in 
one eye. 
7th. 11 a.m. — I saw him, and found that he had spasm of the 
diaphragm on the near side. The beating at the diaphragm 
and at the heart followed each other as regularly as possible, 
and each averaged about 50 in a minute. His physic was operat- 
ing. I ascertained that this morning, about nine or ten o’clock, 
he had been taken out a distance of two miles, for exercise, on a 
very heavy sandy road, and that the spasm came on him when 
he had gone about a mile of the way. There was not the least 
spasm on the off side. I gave 3 s s of pulv. opii in a soft ball. 
4 p.m. — The faeces are only pultaceous. He is warm and 
comfortable. The spasmodic action is not so powerful as it was, 
and it and the heart beat now only about 40 in a minute, but as 
regularly as before. 
In the course of the day, I thought I could feel a sort of double 
beating at the heart; first, the spasm at the side and then the 
double action of the heart itself, or a sort of echo of the first beat 
of the heart immediately afterwards. I never observed this in any 
case before. The spasm at the side appeared to be confined to a 
