ON ABSCESS. 
154 
air. If the interior of these symptomatic abscesses are explored, 
and traced to their origin, the bones or their cartilages, or both, in 
that situation, will be found to have undergone a very considerable 
change. They will have become soft, friable, greyish, or black — 
absorbed to a greater or less extent — and the bones become carious, 
with destruction of their periosteum. From the cavity of the ab- 
scess we shall readily trace a sinus or canal winding its way in 
the course of the large bloodvessels or the surfaces of the muscles, 
through the cellular membrane to the primary seat of inflammation 
and disease of the bones and cartilages. The channel or sinus is 
commonly surrounded by a softened condition of the adjoining tex- 
tures, in a friable or lardaceous state, and lined by a dense, smooth, 
and thick cellular membrane. This canal sometimes dilates into a 
funnel-like termination, entering the abscess ; and the latter, which 
is occasionally irregular in form, is walled on its inner surface by 
the same kind of membrane that we observe in abscesses of a more 
chronic kind. 
I will now proceed to a description of the CONSECUTIVE Ab- 
scess. We are to consider this appellation as distinguishing such 
collections of pus as are found in parts consecutively to its forma- 
tion in distant situations, and between which no communication 
exists. I may here observe, it is a matter of common observation, 
that inflammation taking place in a part, and proceeding to suppu- 
ration, the matter thus produced is absorbed, and subsequently 
formed or found in some other situation. This has led to some 
inquiry as regards the nature and process of these morbid pheno- 
mena, and the circumstances in which these consecutive abscesses 
occur. 
In the human subject this kind of abscess is of more frequent 
occurrence than in the horse ; but in the latter animal it is not un- 
frequently remarked during the progress of strangles ; a species of 
fever in him to which the term is exceedingly inapplicable, and 
calculated to perpetuate very erroneous notions as to the nature of 
the disorder. 
I do not consider abscess as essential to the existence of strangles, 
but commonly following in order or in succession. It is, in every 
sense of the term, a consecutive abscess. By way of comparative 
illustration of this kind of tumour : — A man receives an injury on 
his head ; inflammation of the sinuses of the brain follows, suc- 
ceeded by all the symptoms of a vitiated circulation, and terminating 
in death. Purulent infiltrations, or distinct collections of pus, are 
found, on dissection, in the liver or lungs. Confluent small-pox 
takes place in a child, and during, or following the secondary fever, 
accumulations of pus are observed in the capsules of the joints. 
Examination after death presents the cartilages in an eroded state; 
