CAUSE OF CERTAIN MORBID PHENOMENA. 
255 
which in modern times has been too much overlooked, I mean, the 
suppression of the suppuration — the sudden cessation of a secre- 
tion which, although morbid, had become necessary to the economy, 
and indispensable to the depuration of its humours . I borrow this 
expression from our old authors, and which will sufficiently prove 
that the fact which I shall attempt to illustrate is by no means a 
new one ; it is to be found in almost every page of their writings, 
although somewhat vaguely expressed. 
Read Solleysel on the article fic or crapaud — thrush — which he 
considers as an outlet of the corrupt humours of the body, and which 
are strongly determined to that part; and who was of opinion, that 
if the thrush is dried up, the humour will find some other vent. 
The treatment which he advises for this, and for many other dis- 
eases of the same family, is of an internal nature, in order to de- 
stroy the humour which exists within, e. g. th eadministration of the 
liver of antimony, which, in his opinion, suffers nothing noxious to 
remain, and dissipates every thing which can engender that hu- 
mour which supplies and nourishes the thrush. 
I abstain from any other quotation. In many chapters of Sol- 
leysel — in the writings of the authors on human medicine, on which 
he largely drew, and in the works of those who have so often co- 
pied him, we find continual cautions with regard to the danger of 
suppressing the sources of pus, expressed by the terms metastasis, 
driving in of humours, & c. 
My present object is to recall the attention of practitioners to 
certain morbid phenomena, which cannot be traced to any other 
cause than the sudden suppression of a suppuration, or abnormal 
secretion, and which, by its long duration, has taken rank — if I may 
be allowed the expression — among the excrementitial functions, 
and by its cessation, disturbs certain organic movements. 
In order to render myself better understood, I will state a case : — 
A horse is attacked by a certain disease, which is accompanied for 
a considerable time by an abundant secretion. That secretion shall 
amount to a pint or a quart in the course of a day. This long es- 
tablished excretion is suddenly suppressed. Some time after- 
wards, often within eight or ten hours, the animal becomes dull ; 
he ceases to eat ; his respiration becomes accelerated and loud ; his 
eyes are injected; his nostrils are dilated, and his flanks, beat 
violently. 
On the following day his breath has a faint sickly smell, and his 
general condition is alarming. Auscultation and percussion indi- 
cate the cessation of the functions of the lungs to a fearful extent, 
and this most frequently at the inferior portion of them on each 
side. Many days do not pass before the breath assumes the foetid 
odour so characteristic of gangrene, and the animal succumbs 
