ESSAY ON INFLAMMATION OF THE BRAIN. 493 
filled with coagulated blood of a rusty colour, and which might be 
reduced between the fingers to a powder resembling fine sand. 
When there was ramollissement and water on the brain, the in- 
filtration of the sinuses of the head was less discoloured and greater 
in quantity. The meninges were yellow throughout their whole 
extent. In this case the bloodvessels were easily distinguished, and 
the filaments of the trisplanchnic, or sympathetic nerve, which pe- 
netrated into the brain, were seen, and of a deeper yellow than the 
vessels. The cerebral pulp, mingled with the hydrocephalic fluid, 
resembled a yellow bouillie, and so completely filled the cranial 
cavity as to cause a hernial protrusion between the pia and dura 
mater as soon as the skull was opened. If this hernia was punc- 
tured, the fluid rushed forth in a jet many inches in height, forcing 
out with it a portion of the meninges and the plexus choro'ides. 
In two of the five cases that M. Mullon examined there was 
induration of the brain, and ramollissement in the other three. 
CAUSES. — M. Mullon divides them into two classes. 1st. 
Innate or natural, which he attributes to the peculiar structure of 
the venous system : 2d. Accidental. 
Innate causes. There is no one of the domesticated animals so 
subject to apoplexy as the ox, and this is occasioned by the greater 
size of the veins. Who has not seen animals of this species, ap- 
parently well in the evening, and dead on the following morning, 
and presenting no other morbid lesion but effusion of blood within 
the cranial cavity] Induced by these focts, M. Mullon thinks 
that if an ox is in a state of plethora, in a greater or lesser degree, 
and that, notwithstanding this abundance of blood, it may not be 
such as to cause fatal apoplexy, this may, nevertheless, terminate 
in a congestion more or less considerable, and produced in a greater 
or less length of time ; a congestion which will occasion the disease 
of which we are now treating. In proof of this opinion, we can 
say, that the greater part of the oxen labouring under this disease 
which we have treated were in good condition, and came from 
spring pasture, and that this species of inflammation of the brain 
is confined to the warm periods of the year. The cows also that 
have been attacked by it, were also in good condition, and were 
neither milkers nor nurses. 
“ In the summer seasons, from 1812 to 1818, I opened,’’ says 
M. Mullon, “ more than sixty fax oxen that died suddenly, as was 
generally supposed, of inflammatory fever ; but I am now convinced 
that the greater part of them were apoplectic. There is a dis- 
tinction between these two diseases as easy as it is essential to 
know, and it is apparent at the very first glance of the .animal. 
Oxen that are attacked by inflammatory fever, have, almost al- 
ways, emphysematous enlargements, and accumulation of gas in 
VOL. XII. 3 T 
