282 
ASCITES COMBINED WITH HYDROTHORAX, 
SEQUELS OF PLEURISY. 
By Mr. W. Percivall. 
IN the present state of veterinary medicine, cases of this descrip¬ 
tion carry with them far too much importance to be allowed to 
pass unrecorded : it is by a steady and vigilant attention to them 
during life, and a faithful report of them after death, alone, that 
we can hope, in the course of time, to arrive at a more certain 
diagnosis, and thus lay the foundation for some effectual mode 
of treatment. 
The subject of the present account was a half-bred filley, two 
years’ old, who first showed illness in November, 1828. She 
was on the 5th of that month admitted into hospital for catarrh. 
She coughed ; discharged from the nose; fed indifferently, and 
was for some short time feverish: from all this, however, she 
soon after began gradually to recover; and was on the 3d of 
December again restored, and sent back into her own stable. 
She was “ full of flesh” at the time she became thus indisposed ; 
and the little embonpoint she lost during her indisposition, she 
speedily recovered after she became convalescent. 
Nothing more ailed her until the 7th of January, 1829, on 
which day she was re-admitted into hospital for a sudden and 
rather violent attack of pneumonia. Still, there was nothing 
particular observable in her complaint. She was freely bled ; 
took half-drachm doses of hellebore; and was blistered and 
rowelled, and so forth, in the ordinary way of treatment, according 
as circumstances appeared to indicate. Her case, which, though 
decidedly acute at the beginning, certainly not one of the most 
painful character, was in the course of a few days observed to 
merge into the chronic form, in which it continued for some 
considerable time, if not with danger, with more than ordinary 
obstinacy. At length there came on, rather suddenly, a prodigious 
cedematous tumefaction of the lower parts of the chest and abdo¬ 
men, the swelling extending from the front of the breast (where 
the skin hung pendulous like dewlaps) along the mammae, even 
to the angle formed by the thighs. This was hailed as an omen 
of a happy termination of the disease; and as such, was for some 
time in nowise counteracted: it continuing however longer than 
seemed beneficial, an addition was made to the sedative medi¬ 
cine already employed of some aperient and diuretic ingredients, 
which caused the dropsy slowly to disappear; so that the filley, 
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