328 
ON LUIVyE IN THK CEREBELLUM 
When we first saw the pony, she was lying in a cowshed, in 
a perfectly helpless state. On inquiry, we were informed by 
the doctor that the pony had been turned out to grass during 
the greater part of the summer, and that, the day before we saw 
her, she was galloping about the field in excellent spirits, and 
apparently quite well. In the morning she was found lying down, 
struggling and endeavouring to get-up, and was drawn on a gate 
to the shed. 
Symptoms . — She appeared conscious, but had lost all power 
over the voluntary muscles of the posterior extremities. She could, 
by dint of very great exertion, partially elevate the fore part of 
her body. The pulse was 70, and hard. Respiration a little 
accelerated, and the appetite slightly impaired. When she 
raised her fore part, and endeavoured to get her hind limbs 
along, she became convulsed, and immediately lay down again, 
and gnashed her teeth from intense agony. 
We at once recognized a spinal affection, but from what 
cause we were left entirely in the dark. Dr. Stenson thought 
the bones of the acetabulum were fractured. On careful ex- 
amination we could discover no fracture; therefore we treated it, 
as we should inflammation of the spinal cord and its investing 
membranes, by venesections, laxatives, enemas, and external sti- 
muli. Our treatment proved inefficacious; and in a fortnight 
after her first illness it was deemed requisite to destroy her. 
On dissection we found the theca vertebralis very much en- 
gorged with blood, from the third lumbar vertebra to the fifteenth 
dorsal one; effusion of serum under the theca, and several small 
clots of coagulated blood. 
Being called away professionally, the doctor and a young- 
surgeon prosecuted the dissection up the spine towards the 
shoulders, and about the thirteenth dorsal vertebra they dis- 
covered a large grub (the size of a common nut) imbedded in 
the medulla spinalis. They cautiously detached the investing 
membranes and exposed the grub, which had evidently recently 
died. The theca was inflamed as high up as the fifth dorsal 
vertebra. They excised a portion of the spinal marrow, with the 
grub attached to it, and suspended it in a wide-mouthed bottle, 
and deposited it in the Museum of the Veterinary College, Lon- 
don, in the following year ; where, I believe, it is now. 
The late Professor Coleman, I think, once alluded to it, in his 
Lectures on the Spine, as being a case of great rarity*. 
I do not know whether Professor Sewell mentions the case in 
* Mr. Spooner, in the meeting of the Veterinary Medical Association, in 
January 1838, referred to this specimen, as shewing the possibility of paraly- 
sis and death from the presence of a worm in the brain. — Y. 
