ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE CUTANEOUS SECRETIONS. 465 
grows tardy and profound : a mark of the sedative action, com- 
menced by the blood, which becomes modified in its composition, 
to be subsequently imparted to the nervous system. 
The masses of muscle upon the shoulders are seized with in- 
voluntary tremors : an indication of diminished calorification. 
The visible mucous surfaces, the Schneiderian, conjunctive, and 
buccal, reflect a red violet tint, not inflammatory : another sign of 
the chemical modifications the blood is beginning to undergo. 
The pulse at this time is full and strong, and at the commence- 
ment bounding; the pulsations of the heart are energetic and 
vibrating ; though this first re-action of the heart is not long in 
giving way to the toxical influence the blood, bathing and im- 
pregnating it, has received, causing its vigourless contractions to 
have no more effect than to propel the fluid into the arteries in too 
small jets to fill them and solicit their re-action. 
Some horses stamp and paw and manifest other symptoms of 
cholic, which are ascribable to the congested asthenic condition of 
the vascular system of the bowels. 
The appetite, which may keep good for the first day or two, 
afterwards fails, shewing the same state in the vascular system 
connected with the organic functions. 
The animal staggers in his walk, with difficulty even maintains 
himself on his legs, and in the stable lies at full length, refusing to 
rise when urged to do so. Sometimes even, particularly towards 
the conclusion of the experiment, the animal is unable to rise : a 
sign of the loss of muscular energy induced by deprivation of the 
vitalizing properties of the blood. These primary symptoms 
furnished by the nervous, vascular, muscular, respiratory , and diges- 
tive systems, and by the calorific function, become simultaneously 
aggravated as the experiment is prolonged, though some are more 
marked than others. 
For example, the respiration speedily becomes difficult and 
blowing, and yet slow in its rhythm ; which forms a singular con- 
trast with what we witness in general from failing in the nervous 
system, that being ordinarily attended with accelerated respiration : 
the acceleration being in ratio to the difficulties of sanguification, in 
order that compensation may be made, by the increased number 
of respirations, for the diminished quantity of air inspired, or for 
the extent of surface left for the blood to become changed upon. 
But in the present case it is not the respiratory organs that are 
at fault ; it is the blood itself, charged as it is to saturation with 
matters of combustion of which it cannot disencumber itself through 
the cutaneous channels, and which at every fresh inspiration re- 
ceives with the air, in place of an element of revivification, a fresh 
and more intense altered condition, the consequence of sur-oxyda- 
