ABSCESSES IN THE MESENTERY. 
429 
fists, containing pus, and attached to the omentum by a broadish 
peduncle, eight or nine inches long, and weighing, I should 
think, two or three pounds. 
I now removed the whole of the intestines from the abdomen, 
and separated them from each other, and from the mesentery 
from one end to the opposite one, in doing which I discovered 
another abscess, quite as large as the last, and, at from three to 
four yards from the stomach, and attached to what may be called 
the ileum. 
The intestinein the neighbourhood of the abscess was considera- 
bly contracted, and twisted around and about it in a very peculiar 
way. 
The tumour was quite filled with fluid pus, and there was an 
opening out of it through which one’s finger would pass into the 
adjoining intestine. 
Close up to a portion of the ileum there was another similar 
abscess, and which also opened into the intestine. 
The interior of all these abscesses was dark-coloured and uneven. 
The kidneys were rather larger than usual ; but they were 
tolerably healthy. 
The mucous membrane of the bladder was highly inflamed and 
thickened, and contained a great deal of bloody mucus. 
The heart was very large, but was healthy ; and the liver large 
and a little softened. 
Observations . — These abscesses, no doubt, had been gradually 
formed in consequence of her having been exposed during most 
of the winter in low wet lands adjoining the river Dee ; and it is 
very probable that, from their weight, they would be occasionally 
obstructing the passage of the food through the intestines, either 
where they were attached to or suspended over some of the others 
in the neighbourhood ; and that the sitting posture which she 
often assumed was for the purpose of removing the weight of the 
tumours to some other part which would not cause pain by its 
pressure or obstruction. The tumour in the omentum was very 
loose, and hung by a portion of it eight or nine inches long ; and 
which would be very likely to be suspended occasionally over a 
portion of intestine, although it was, in a great measure, at the 
lower part of the abdomen. 
On the 5th of February last I fired this mare’s fore legs for a 
“sprain in the back sinews;” and to-day I examined the legs. 
The seat of disease in each was a great thickening at the back 
part of the leg in the tendon of the flexor pedis perforatus muscle, 
from the knee to the fetlock; but it was worse towards the 
lower part. The tendon of the flexor pedis perforans was not 
at all thickened. 
3 M 
VOL. XVI. 
