380 
UNUSUAL AND DIFFICULT PARTURITION. 
and a great part of the chest, presenting themselves successively., 
were extracted without any great difficulty ; and I was beginning 
to hope that our object would be accomplished without much 
farther difficulty, when I found that I had to overcome an ob- 
stacle on which I had not sufficiently calculated, — the great dis- 
tention of the abdomen. I extracted the principal viscera, but 
then I found that I was far from having accomplished my object. 
The haunches and the croup — strangely increased in size, from 
the emphysematous process that had been set up — seemed to 
bid defiance to all my efforts. Eight men were employed to en- 
deavour to force them away. The rope tore completely through 
them, but the divided portions remained in the uterus. 
The certain loss of the beast — the cadaverous smell which was 
exhaled from this hot-bed of putrefaction — the apparent impos- 
sibility of extricating the haunches — the perspiration with which 
I was covered — the fatigue which I felt, and the danger to which 
I was exposed by my arms being longer plunged in this focus of 
mischief— almost induced me to abandon the case. 
After having rested, however, for a few minutes, I returned to 
my work. I pushed back the haunches of the foetus as far as I 
possibly could, and then, after numerous efforts, I succeeded in 
implanting a crotchet in one of the thighs : an assistant pulled 
at the rope while I worked at the haunch, until I had so far 
loosened it as to be able to move it a little from one side to 
the other, and, at length, was enabled to reach the extremities. 
I had not forgotten the obstacle of the haunches and the croup ; 
so, after having made several vain and useless efforts to draw it 
out, I did not hesitate to proceed to tear off one of the extremities 
by means of a crotchet implanted in the articulation of the thigh 
with the haunch : having accomplished this, the remainder of the 
trunk was easily drawn away. 
At the close of this operation, the animal was so exhausted 
that she lay perfectly motionless, and the cold and discoloured 
vulva was dreadfully swollen. 
We fomented and gently wiped the parts, and gave her a bottle 
of warm wine. Some hours afterwards she got up, shivering and 
trembling all over, and beating the ground with her feet as much 
as she had power to do. A bloody fluid was discharged in 
great quantity from the vulva, and she made numerous efforts, 
as if she was attempting to expel the womb. 
The proprietor then, seeing the sacrifice that must be made, 
determined to destroy her, in order to save as much of her flesh as 
he could before the evil proceeded farther. 
