190 
TAIL-SLIP. 
he said that he would soon cure her, for she had had from the 
beginning, and still had “ the tail slip.” Accordingly he ampu- 
tated a portion of her tail, and ordered her brisket to be fomented 
with a decoction of chamomile flowers. 
On the 19th I had occasion to pass by the farm, when the 
owner asked me whether I would not once more look at the cow, 
although I had given her up. I did look at her, and I found that 
my two perpendicular setons had been abstracted, and a trans- 
verse one substituted, and that the swelling now extended 
posteriorly to the udder, and anteriorly to the lower jaw. Both 
tail-slip doctors of medicine paid her a visit while I was 
there, when the amputation of a second portion of the tail 
took place, and four good hen-eggs were ordered to be adminis- 
tered. 
I loitered awhile, in order to hear their conversation. They 
were both in good hope that the case would terminate favourably; 
but they differed sadly in their respective theories of the disease. 
The old farmer said that it commenced at the root of the horns, 
and came along the marrow of the back, and if it did not get out 
it killed the beast. The hawker declared that he had often taken 
worms out of the tail — that tail-slip began at the head of the 
tail, and that, if it did not get out, it killed the beast : and 
that my denying the existence of such a disease was weak- 
ness in me, both of them brotherly agreed. I was asked what I 
thought of her now, and I replied that the case was altogether 
hopeless. 
At his next visit, the hawker advised that she should be de- 
stroyed, but the owner would not permit it, and on the following 
morning she was found dead. 
I was requested to be present at the post-mortem examination. 
The hawker attended, and on cutting into the fourth stomach, 
and observing some inflammation in it, declared that the cause 
of death was evidently there. I was then employed in examining 
the sternum, which 1 did as carefully as I could. I found two 
gallons and three quarts of a brownish fluid in the pericardic 
bag. The surface of the heart was in a softened macerated state; 
and the pericardium was enormously thickened. In the left 
side of the chest were three gallons and a half of a greenish 
fluid. Still pursuing my examination, I found a needle 2£ 
inches long, which had found its way from the anterior and 
inferior portion of the paunch, through the diaphragm, and 
which was then entangled in the posterior part of the pericardium. 
