732 
A CASE OF SINGULAR DESTRUCTION OF THE 
LUNGS. 
By Mr. T. Darby, Louth. 
On Monday, September the 9th, I was requested by Mr. Wil- 
loughby, innkeeper, of this place, to look at a mare that was ill. 
On examining her, I found her to be, indeed, extremely ill, yet on 
inquiring the cause I could get no satisfactory account about her, 
but the whole of my information was comprised in this, that, about 
a month previously, the horsekeeper had given her a drench to 
cure the grease, and she had never recovered from the effect of it. 
I had attended this mare at different times, and had found her a 
well-working strong mare. She had been running in the Lincoln 
coach for upwards of four years. She had now, however, a pulse 
upwards of 80, with extreme difficulty of breathing — her mouth 
open, and occasionally gasping for breath, and she shrunk very 
much when pressed over the region of the kidneys. I bled her ; 
inserted setons in the chest and sides ; gave sedative medicine, and 
administered injections. 
In the evening she was worse — on the Tuesday in a still more 
hopeless state — and in the afternoon she died with scarcely a 
struggle. 
I opened her on the following morning. The bowels were per- 
fectly healthy ; the kidneys were both inflamed, but, with this ex- 
ception, there was scarcely a trace of disease in the whole of the 
abdominal cavity. When, however, I cut through the diaphragm, 
at least two pailfuls of watery milky fluid escaped. I was anxious 
to see the state of the lungs, but, however strange it may appear, 
there were no lungs to be found — not a portion — except a mass of 
foetid matter at the termination of the windpipe. The pericardic 
sac was much diseased, and the mediastinum adhering to the ribs 
on the near side. In this state the wretched animal had been at 
work a few days previously. 
[It is to be wished that Mr. Darby had given a fuller account of 
this strange lesion. Was it an illustration not only of the extent, 
but of the rapidity with which infiltration of the lung with puru- 
lent matter sometimes takes place 1 This mare was at work a 
few days previous to her death. We have three cases on our 
private record, in which, in horses that had been apparently 
well four, six, and seven days previous to death, pneumonia 
supervened, and the animals were lost. In all of them the con- 
sistence of the lungs was very much diminished, and the 
