406 COM PTE RENDU OF THE SCHOOL OF ALFORT. 
be altogether rejected. The ligature of the vein ordinarily falls 
before the clot is sufficiently consolidated. The air, perhaps, 
comes in contact with it and softens it, and then the haemorrhage 
appears more to be dreaded than ever. 
At the closing of one ulceration of the jugular, and which 
had for a long time resisted all the means that we had em- 
ployed, we observed a singular case of vertigo. This animal 
had been bled, and the wound would not heal. He was carefully 
placed between two stalls, so contrived as to prevent him from 
lying down, or rubbing himself against the stalls ; and during 
a month he had been condemned to the most complete absti- 
nence from solid food, the least movement of the jaws having 
brought about a renewal of the haemorrhage. 
This horse, on a certain morning, presented symptoms of 
vertigo. Sometimes he would throw himself forward on the 
ropes that restrained him, and then he would fall back with 
violence on the traces behind. The slightest noise alarmed him ; 
a ray of light penetrating into his dark stable disturbed him. 
The pupils were much dilated, but the respiration was calm ; it 
had nearly its usual character, and the mucous membranes were 
not injected. There was no heat or sensibility on the cranial 
region. 
Similar symptoms have already been observed in similar cir- 
cumstances, and attributed, by observers, to inflammation of the 
arachnoid membrane, consecutive to the extension of inflammation 
of the jugular vein to its roots. In the case which we are now de- 
scribing, the absence of every sign of general inflammatory reaction 
and of every febrile movement would not permit us to admit the 
existence of arachnoid inflammation. We rather imagined that 
the phenomena that were produced were attributable to a cere- 
bral action determined by the vacuity of the intestinal canal. 
We know that, in the human being, too long abstinence pro- 
duces strange fancies and hallucinations. This horse was turned 
towards his manger, and oats were placed before him, which he 
devoured with avidity ; and by mere good luck the venous clot was 
sufficiently solid to resist the movements of the lower jaw, and, 
when the digestive action was brought into play, the nervous 
phenomena ceased completely. 
