ENORMOUS SEROUS ABSCESS IN A CART MARE. 367 
or yet have passed a seton through the abscess in the primary 
stage, for fear of exciting too great an inflammatory action ; yet 
there is but little to be apprehended after the animal is brought 
into a debile state. 
I have frequently had very considerable inflammatory action 
in small serous abscesses excited by at once passing a seton 
through them. I consider it more prudent to give vent to the 
fluid two or three times before I resort either to the seton or 
injection. 
After the animal had taken a few tonics, the pulse fell again 
to 42. This case proves that a vast quantity of serum can be lost 
by an animal, in comparison with the fibrinous part of the blood — 
that part which contains the red globules, which are the grand 
source of the vital action of that fluid. 
Dietetic treatment . — This consisted in allowing food azotised 
in the maximum, or highly charged with nitrogen. Non-azotised 
food, or those substances containing azote in the minimum, are 
not in this case indicated, when allowance is made for the loss 
of so much albuminous matter. Nitrogenised food in the excess 
was requisite to keep pace with the loss of so much of the flesh- 
forming principle. 
Non-azotised food, or that food which abounds only spa- 
ringly in albumen, and containing the saccharine principle, as in 
turnips, parsneps, or carrots, would have induced too great a 
debility ; 1st, from the food containing saccharine matter, in- 
ducing diuresis; 2dly, from being non-nitrogenised, it could 
have afforded none, or not sufficient vegetable albumen for the 
formation of flesh, which, in this case, was desirable to be main- 
tained, from the loss of so large an amount of one of its con- 
stituents. So richly charged was the serum taken from this 
abscess, that, by adding nitric acid in sufficient quantity, the 
whole of it was coagulated. The application of heat, in like 
manner, also did it. 
THE OCCASIONAL EXISTENCE OF SHARP-POINTED 
SUBSTANCES IN THE MUSCLES. 
Communicated by Mr. J. H. Robinson, Greenock. 
I beg to lay before you a case which came under my notice 
in October last, in the course of my practice, which may prove 
interesting, from the rarity of its occurrence. 
