4*22 
A CASE OF OSSIFICATION AND 
patient was not doing well. I saw the animal. He was dull, but 
there was nothing to indicate serious illness; and I confess that I 
thought lightly of the case. The weather being very stormy, the 
pony had not been taken out, but had been turned into a loose box. 
At night the groom came to me again, and said that he thought 
the animal was worse. In truth, he was so; and that which a few 
hours before I had little heeded, had now assumed a very serious 
aspect. Both the pulse and the breathing were fearfully quick- 
ened. I bled him to the extent of four pounds, or more. He was 
sweating and pawing, and, when down, experienced very little 
relief, but began to bite and tear the rug which covered him. We 
could hear distinctly the borborygmi in his bowels, as if the physic 
was about to operate, and which it had only yet done very slightly. 
I got an injection ready, with a view to facilitate its operation, and 
introduced my hand into the rectum, in order to relieve that intes- 
tine of its contents. 
A little way up I felt several hard substances, or excrescences — 
as they seemed to me — growing from the mucous membrane of the 
intestine; and, somewhat farther on, I found, to my astonishment, 
a lesion in the bowel, into which my three fingers readily entered. 
All hopes were now at an end, for the faeces which should have 
been discharged through the anus had passed into the cavity of 
the abdomen. The pony lingered on until the morning, and then, 
died. 
On opening the abdomen, the fluid, & c. flowed rapidly out, and, 
the intestines being cleaned, the opening in the rectum was quite 
evident, and nearly large enough to admit my hand through it. I 
removed a large portion of the intestine, both anterior and posterior 
to the rent, and found several of the excrescences to which I have 
j ust referred ; and, on examination, it seemed that they consisted 
distinctly of bone. Ossific matter deposited between the mucous 
and muscular coats of the rectum I did not anticipate finding. A 
sloughing process, the consequence of a deposition of this kind, 
had, probably, produced this opening through the gut. I did not 
use the caster ; so that no suspicion could arise that the pipe could 
have injured or perforated the intestine. Be this as it may, the 
pony died while under physic, and was, to all appearance, well 
enough before he took it. He had been only a few weeks in the 
neighbourhood, and was said to be of foreign breed. He was very 
thick- winded. — Was there any connexion between the physicking 
and the rupture of the intestine 1 and if so, what was the nature of 
that connexion? 
[It is not unusual to find hypertrophy of the submucous cellular 
tissue in the rectum. We have observed it many times, and 
oftener in old than in young animals. Sometimes there is merely 
