584 WOUNDS PENETRATING INTO THE CHEST. 
more in the left than in the right; the injection had been absorbed 
in the space of these six days. The wound in the parietes of 
the chest had nothing remarkable in its appearance. The open¬ 
ing of the pleura was closed by a fibrinous clot, already con¬ 
siderably organized. 
Second horse:—About two pounds of fluid in the chest, of a 
mahogany colour, more in the left cavity than in the right; no 
trace of pneumonia nor of pleurisy, except about the wound ; 
but this lesion was independent of the sanguineous effusion in the 
chest, and was, as in all the other experiments, the effect of the 
operation which preceded the puncture of the pleura. 
Third horse :—In the inferior part of the left pleural cavity was 
a mass, evidently part of the effused blood, and which had not 
yet been entirely absorbed. There was no trace of any fibrinous 
clot, nor of false membrane, otherwise than at the immediate 
neighbourhood of the wound, where was the commencement of 
pleurisy. The surface of the bloody mass, of which we have 
spoken, was covered by a very thin kind of pellicle, almost 
transparent, and the greater part of which could be raised without 
tearing it: the rest of it was not unlike the cruoric clot of a 
mass of blood which had been kept with the serum in a vessel 
after bleeding, Besides this mass of blood, altered to a certain 
degree, there were four pounds of serous fluid, of a deep red co¬ 
lour, in the chest. 
It is probable that, if the death of these two horses had been 
deferred a little longer, there would not have been any trace of 
the injected blood, as was, indeed, the case in the first horse, 
into whose chest a less quantity of blood had been thrown. 
Other experiments have confirmed us in that opinion; for we 
have often opened horses after there had been, without shadow 
of doubt, effusion of blood as the consequence of wounds mere 
or less extended and deep, and we have never found any trace 
of blood when the examination has taken place a considerable 
time after the infliction of the wound, as fifteen days, three 
weeks, and a month. On the contrary, when the wounded 
animals were opened immediately, or a short time after they had 
received the injury, we found a mass of blood, in a somewhat 
solid state, disposed in the form of a clot, of which the superior 
portion, supposing the animal was standing, was of a lighter co¬ 
lour than the inferior one. We will return to this important sub¬ 
ject, the study of these bloody effusions. 
Journal de Med. Vet., April and May 1834. 
[To be continued.] 
