256 
SUPPRESSION Ob' SUPPURATION THE 
under the influence of the disease, improperly called gangrenous 
pneumonia. 
In other cases, these phenomena are accompanied by the deve- 
lopment of enormous tumours on the chest, or behind the shoulders — 
tumours which are the result of an infiltration of yellow serosity — 
such as are observed in the disease called by the old veterinarians 
le charbon blanc. 
On examination after death, a great portion of the pulmonary 
tissue is found completely diseased, and particularly towards the 
lower portion of each lobe. It is hard and resisting ; and, when 
cut into, it presents the appearance of black and white marble. 
Here and there, and in the midst of this mottled substance, are 
purulent collections, more or less considerable. The pus is diffused 
through, or, as it w’ere, combined with the pulmonary tissue, the 
web-like texture of which has completely disappeared. The odour 
escaping from the lung is insupportably foetid. 
To what are we to attribute these phenomena, so rapidly and 
almost instantaneously produced 1 Is there a reabsorption of pus 
by the lymphatics, or by the veins] There is nothing to demon- 
strate this in the facts which I am about to state. During life, not one 
superficial absorbent has appeared engorged, as in the reabsorptions 
cited by M. Renault ; and then, observe ! on what product of 
suppuration could this reabsorption act, seeing that it was just at 
this moment that the pus could no longer be secreted that these 
phenomena arise ] I will not stop to answer these questions, but 
proceed to the history of some cases in which the relation of 
causality between the suppression of the suppuration and the 
phenomena which followed it is so striking as to carry conviction 
to every mind. 
Case I. — An entire draught horse, about twelve years old, had 
been for more than two months seriously afflicted with very bad 
fistulous withers involving the summits of three of the spinous 
apophyses and the ligament which ran along them, and rendering 
them carious. A veterinary surgeon, to whom the animal had 
been entrusted, had favoured the escape of the pus, by making seve- 
ral incisions, and passing setons in the direction of the sinues. 
He was admitted into our hospital on the 15th of November, 
1838. There was a large and indolent swelling on the withers, and 
on the summit was the entrance to a fistulous cavity, two or three 
inches in diameter. The skin of the superior part of the withers, 
being loosened to a great extent, formed a kind of straight bridge 
across the cavity, and on each side was an incision perpendicular 
to the axis of the body. At the inferior angle of these incisions a 
seton had been passed, which was prolonged to the extent of some 
inches under this integument, and which thus completed the pro- 
