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POST-MORTEM TRANSLATIONS. 
affection which he had to treat, observed, that purges never did 
any good. M. Guersent, in his - Essay on Epizootics,” informs 
us, that good practitioners feel convinced that purgatives are pre¬ 
judicial at any stage of the disorder; and believe there is much 
analogy between the carbunculous typhus of cattle and the adu - 
narnic or putrid malignant fever of (human) hospitals. 
Post-mortem Translations. 
BY F. J. J. RIGOT. 
I f form, organization, and life,, are so united in an animal body 
Jiat the existence of one of these conditions pre-supposes the pre¬ 
sence of the others, animals after death can no longer retain the 
power of preserving their bodies in that state in which they were 
pnor to the cessation of the numerous and various phenomena which 
constitute life. No sooner has the vital spark fled from an organized 
body, than the elements of which that body is composed begin to 
disunite, to change, and to enter into fresh combinations, regulated 
by physical laws, which life no longer counteracts. In the dead 
su ject, oiganized matter is undergoing continual changes: it 
loses its primitive form; it in the end becomes incognoscible, 
and total destruction of organization is the inevitable result of a 
series of changes regularly progressive, but which vary in every 
organ. J J 
Notwithstanding the carcass preserves, for some time after 
death, nearly the same organization and composition which it 
maintained during life, yet from the moment life departs chancres 
commence, and continue to augment; and, therefore, it becomes 
very important for the study of pathological anatomy, that we 
should examine subjects while fresh, and thereby correct any 
erroneous ideas which might have crept into the mind from the 
inspection of carcasses in which such changes had already begun 
to become manifest. J ° 
Among the post-mortem phenomena most useful to become ac¬ 
quainted with, are those sero-sanguinolent transudations into serous 
cavities, such as the abdomen, thorax, and pericardium: trans¬ 
udations to which I call the attention of veterinarians in particu- 
Iai, because they have been, and even still too often are, con¬ 
sidered as morbid alterations occurring during life. On which 
account it is most important that we should establish some un¬ 
erring test by which we might distinguish these post-mortem phe¬ 
nomena from veritable disease. From multiplied researches into 
this subject, I have come to the following positive conclusions:_ 
Sero-sanguinolent transudations are to be regarded as post¬ 
mortem occurrences; first, whenever there is no perceptible lesion 
