CASE OF RUPTURE OF THE SPLEEN. 
155 
box. The symptoms no way abating, but rather exacerbated, she 
had one drachm of calomel and two of opium given her. She was 
offered some chilled water, and appeared very thirsty : a small 
quantity only was allowed her at first, but afterwards as much as 
she liked. Meantime her pains got worse, expressed by pawings 
at the belly with the off hind leg, and scrapings or stampings with 
the off fore. She had not staled ; she dunged no more, though 
once and again she made a feint to do the one or the other. Four 
drachms of aloes were now’ given her in ball. Mr. Hughes exa- 
mined her per rectum, but found no dung, and her bladder soft. 
Her pulse had been at nearly 80, but was soft and weak; her 
respiration unequal. About ten o’clock she began to sigh and 
breathe hard, her other symptoms becoming hourly worse. She 
had drunk a bucketful of tepid water, and eaten a bit of sloppy 
mash ; but she seemed to do so rather by way of lulling pain 
through diversion of the senses from her Immediate sufferings to an 
indifferent act. 
I visited her at two ; she had been down, and was risen again, 
bathed in a clammy sweat; indeed, between her off leg and her 
mammae the sweat was churned to the consistence of new butter. 
Her ears were not cold, and her legs had been so thickly wrapped 
in flannel bandages, that they, too, were of a fair temperature : but 
that ominous upturning of the lip was more and more repeated ; her 
mouth was dry, and her looks most careworn and woe-begone. 
There was none of that suspicious prying at the flanks, with the 
impatient wafture of the head, that with such mute eloquence pro- 
claims the presence of colic or enteritis. She stood on the same 
spot, but without a moment’s respite from pain, her muzzle de- 
pressed almost to the floor, as though she would fain lie down, but 
dared not. At ten o’clock in the morning she expired with one 
terrific struggle, bursting open the door, the lock being wrenched 
off, and falling with her forehand through into the yard. 
I had her opened at once, and the first object that rivetted my 
attention was a red stain upon her entrails. I touched it, and 
found blood upon my hand. After removing the pendulous ham- 
mock wherein swung a fine colt foal, the autopsy proceeded. Her 
lungs we found tuberculous, her kidneys somewhat soft and spongy, 
her liver very pale, and her heart without much blood. Her ab- 
domen contained swimming about it nearly three gallons of blood, 
and the spleen was ruptured in three places on the concave side, 
twice lengthwise ; of which the largest rupture was about an 
inch and a half below the angle at the top, the next an inch 
below it, and the lowest, crosswise, almost at the very tip : at each 
rupture the blood was clotted. The spleen appeared gorged 
