322 COM PTE llENDU OF THE LYONS SCHOOL, 1839 - 40 . 
there was cough or difficulty of respiration, indicating congestion 
of the lungs, setons were had recourse to, or the sides and chest 
were blistered. This method of treatment was generally success- 
ful, if the animal was attended to in time, and was of a good 
constitution, and exempt from organic lesions. 
Gastric fever, however, was sometimes indicated by symptoms 
less apparent and decisive. This was sometimes the case on the 
first attack, but was oftener the consequence of being put to work 
too soon, or having been exposed anew to the original causes of 
disease. In these cases the appetite was diminished or de- 
stroyed — the skin harsh and dry, and the strength and spirits much 
diminished in despite of every thing that could be done to prevent 
it. Colicky pains were evident and sometimes violent ; there was 
cough and difficulty of respiration ; and at length the patients 
pined away and died. Traces of inflammation of the abdominal 
viscera were found, with lesions of the lungs or false membranes 
in the thoracic cavity, or pleuritic effusion. 
Bronchitis, pneumonia, and pleurisy, have been very frequent 
in the last session, and almost always fatal in the animals in 
which previous organic lesions had existed, or there was a tend- 
ency to tubercular affections. The animals that were attacked 
having arrived at the period when resolution took place, were 
characterized by their extremely foetid breath, and, a little time 
after this, a foetid discharge issued from the nostrils. The pituitary 
membrane was ulcerated, and pneumonia was succeeded by 
glanders. 
Attentive observation of the diseases of the chest in horses 
shews their extreme obscurity, notwithstanding the two powerful 
auxiliaries we have in percussion and auscultation. However 
carefully we may examine the walls of the chest, it is only a small 
part of the lung that can be brought under our cognizance. In 
a great majority of cases they are the inferior borders and the 
anterior appendices of the lungs, which undergo a morbid change, 
and they are precisely the parts which correspond with those 
portions of the walls of the thorax which it is impossible to 
explore. 
We have observed two cases in the last year in which inflam- 
mation of the joints has followed an attack of pleurisy. This 
affection, to which M. Bouley, jun. has for the first time called 
the attention of the profession, prevents the convalescence which 
should succeed to the subsidence of pleurisy, and wears down 
the flesh and the strength of the animal by means of the pain and 
disgust of food which so rapidly follow the first disease. We 
have adopted the treatment of M. Bouley, which consists, in the 
acute stage, of local bleeding, emollient cataplasms, and anodynes, 
