AND ITS MEMBRANES IN THE HORSE. 
53 
disappears altogether; the sensibility of the limbs does not 
usually undergo any alteration at the commencement of the 
disease; and it is only when the affection makes considerable 
progress that it diminishes, and at length disappears altogether. 
Sometimes, however, although the power of motion is lost, the 
feeling is unimpaired ; on the other hand, I have seen the total 
loss of feeling, and the continuance of the power of motion: but 
I have oftenest observed a simultaneous loss of both faculties. 
The organic alteration which we afterwards meet with generally 
explains these different morbid appearances. 
Such are the principal symptoms of spontaneous paraplegia. 
If a rational mode of treatment is not promptly adopted, and 
steadily pursued, the disease makes rapid progress, and the case 
becomes hopeless. Unhappily we are compelled to acknowledge 
that it is almost always so. The patients generally die on the 
second or third day; sometimes they are carried off in tw ; elve or 
fifteen hours; and at other times they linger on to the sixth or 
eighth day. In these sad lingering cases the palsy spreads 
from the hind limbs to the fore ones, and attacks the respiratory 
muscles; the appetite ceases; the sense becomes obtuse; the 
pulse feeble and accelerated; the respiration quick and painful; 
a general sweat inundates the body; the strength gradually 
fails; and the animal dies after having sadly beaten himself 
about. If we afterwards search with attention for the causes of 
death, we shall almost always find them in the morbid changes 
which the spinal marrow or its membranes present.—I proceed to 
relate some cases. 
. CASE I. 
A baj horse, entire, aged six years, wss drawing a carriage at 
a tolerable pace, when, all at once, be became lame in both hind 
extremities, and without any apparent cause. He was imme¬ 
diately sent to my infirmary, which he reached with difficulty. 
Scarcely had he arrived when he fell on the litter, never more to 
rise. He exhibited most of the symptoms which I have just 
described: an abundant perspiration covered his body, and 
formed a vaporous atmosphere around him; his fore limbs were 
agitated by movements sudden and convulsive; the hind limbs 
were immoveable, and their sensibility w r as nearly gone ; the pulse 
was accelerated, and hard; the animal often looked at his flanks; 
he was in violent and continual agitation, and seemed to suffer 
the most intense pain. 
The most active antiphlogistic treatment was adopted without 
any success; and the horse expired about eighteen hours after 
the first attack. 
Examination twelve hours after death .—The thoracic and 
