238 
OSSIFICATION AND HYPERTROPHY 
From the various experiments, the processes of which he 
describes, he deduces the following conclusions: — 
1. In the contact of a metallic salt, having as its base the oxides 
of iron, copper, lead, zinc, mercury, silver, See., with an albu- 
minous or serous fluid a combination is established between the 
albumen which these fluids contain and the metallic salt. 
2. The compound may, agreeably to the relation of the salt 
with it, be insoluble or soluble in water. 
8. The insolubility of these combinations explains the desicca- 
tive property which certain pharmaceutical preparations possess, 
in the composition of which salts of lead or of zinc enter. 
4. In the employment of astringent medicines, and in the de- 
struction of the tissues by the potential cautery, there is equally 
a combination between the tissues and the salts which are brought 
into contact with them : a combination which forms part of the 
scar, which is afterwards separated from the living tissue. 
The same Professor, who neglects no occasion of submitting to 
chemical analysis the different pathological products which the 
animals that die in the school at Alfort present, has examined, 
at the request of the Professor of Anatomy, the kidney of a horse 
that was completely ossified. It offered, on chemical analysis, 
water in combination 73, the renal tissue 18, and phosphate of 
lime 1.80. In a sound kidney the proportion of water was in- 
creased to 79, and that of the renal tissue to 20. Consequently, 
in the pathological product under examination there w 7 as an ad- 
dition of 8 or 9 per cent, of calcareous salts, which formed the 
base of the osseous tissue. 
Rec. de Med. Vet. Sept. 1840. 
A Case of complete Ossification of the Right Auricle 
in a Horse complicated with Hypertrophy of the 
Heart. 
By M. G. Barth^lemy. 
The maladies of the heart, so frequent and so well known in 
the human being, are seldom observed, or at least have scarcely 
been studied, in our domesticated animals ; in consequence of 
this, our veterinary works contain only cases of these diseases 
few and far between, The following possesses peculiar value and 
interest. 
The horse that is the subject of this memoir, was five or six 
, years old, small in stature, weakly in appearance, but doomed 
to work in a public carriage. He laboured in this service 
only about five months, for he was found to be incapable of the 
