608 A CASE OF SUB-PERITONEAL HEMORRHAGE. 
corded appears to me not to be entirely without interest, since 
similar phenomena are rarely met with in the practice of hippo- 
pathology. We have seen that hemorrhage took place to a 
large extent between the peritoneum and the muscular coat of 
the ilium, and, as I should have before mentioned, that this he- 
morrhage was apparently from the vessels of the peritoneum. 
Now, this kind of hemorrhage is extremely rare in the horse, al- 
though not unfrequently met with in the practice of human medi- 
cine. However, although we have seen that the same lesion can 
exist in man and the horse, the symptoms and results in the one 
are nevertheless, very different from those in the other. In what 
does this difference consist, and by what is it caused ? 
We know from observation, that when any obstruction exists 
in the intestinal canal of man, the primary symptoms are pain 
and restlessness. To this succeeds nausea, and the patient com- 
mences to vomit, and continues to have violent paroxysms of 
vomition and retching from time to time, until either the obstruc- 
tion is reduced or else gangrene is established, when all pain 
ceases, and death speedily follows. Such is a general outline 
of the symptoms manifested by the human being suffering under 
intestinal obstruction. Let us now turn and consider those pre- 
sented by the more humble, but not less sensitive, animal, the 
horse under similar circumstances. In him, when an obstruc- 
tion, particularly one of the kind which now occupies us, exists, 
the primary sensations are precisely similar to those in man, as 
may be easily recognized by the symptoms of colic, if I may be 
allowed so familiar an expression. These symptoms after a little 
time become calmed, and give place to an apparent tranquillity, 
that, in reality, is a state of intense nausea, but which the poor 
animal being speechless, is unable to inform us of, like the higher 
being, man. This state continuing for some time, indefinitely 
long or short, according to the constitution, the phenomena of 
anti-peristaltic action is established, and the violent symptoms 
again appear. In this we see the results of the peculiar organi- 
zation of the stomach of the horse. 
This animal is unable, from the arrangement of the muscular 
fibres of this organ at the cardiac division, to accomplish vomition, 
and so disembarrass himself of its contents, like man and other 
animals : still, however, the antiperistaltic action continues, the 
stomach becomes distended, the symptoms increase in violence, 
and when this organ is distended to its utmost degree by the 
reversed action of the intestines forcing their contents forward in- 
stead of backwards, one of two states is the result ; that is to say, 
the stomach either is ruptured and the animal becomesexternally 
tranquil, and an ordinary spectator would say i( he is better, and 
