S24 CONTRIBUTIONS TO COMPARATIVE PATHOLOGY. 
Mr. Gulliver, assistant surgeon to the Royal Regiment of Horse 
Guards, was present at the post-mortem examination. On dissect- 
ing back the skin of the abdomen, we found a more intense yel- 
lowness of the cellular membrane, and, as we proceeded in our 
search, every portion of adipose matter and cellular texture was 
found to be deeply stained with yellow. The omentum and me- 
sentery, and peritoneal coat, were likewise of the same colour. The 
parietes of the large intestines were thickened in several places 
for the space of an inch or more. On cutting into them, we found 
some induration of the parietes generally, and ulceration of the 
mucous membrane within. With these exceptions the intestinal 
tube was sound. The spleen also was healthy. 
The liver was strangely hepatized. It was not much enlarged, 
but it was of a pale-brown yellow colour, opposing, not an elastic, 
but a firm dead resistance to the touch, and when it was cut into 
every vessel seemed to be in a manner obliterated. The gall-blad- 
der was strangely distended. It protruded a couple of inches be- 
low the lobe of the liver ; and at the point where its parietes sepa- 
rated from the liver it was ruptured, and a black coagulated sub- 
stance, as large as the top of a finger, protruded. A little on one 
side of and parallel with this rupture the parietes of the gall-blad- 
der had also given way, and the peritoneal coat alone prevented 
the protrusion of more of this black viscid mass. 
This substance might be w'ell mistaken at first for coagulated 
blood. At its first appearance we thought it to be blood ; it was 
quite as dark as that fluid, but it left the stain of bile on the fin- 
gers. No portion of it had separated and fallen into and stained 
the abdominal cavity. A portion of it had broken through the 
parietes of the vesica fellis, but it tenaciously adhered to the por- 
tion yet remaining within. We cut into it, and there escaped a vis- 
cid coagulum of the form and size of the gall-bladder, with a few 
drops of black grumous fluid dropping from it. The hepatic duct 
and the ductus communis choledochus were partly occupied by a 
similar substance. 
Dr. Marshall Hall, in his Lectures on the Theory and Practice 
of Medicine, speaking of rupture of the gall-bladder in the human 
being, very accurately describes, with one exception — that of vomit- 
ing — the symptoms which attended this case. “ The symptoms are 
those of the most sudden and acute peritonitis : excruciating pain 
and tenderness, sickness, sinking, and, in a word, the symptoms 
observed in perforation of the stomach or intestine*.” 
It is noticed in both works of Andral, but it is perfectly new in 
the records of veterinary medicine. Has it come under the notice 
of any of our brethren 1 
* Lancet, 37, 8, II. 420. 
