ON DISEASES OF THE LUNGS IN HORSES. 
117 
and sympathetic fevers; quick breathing denotes sharp pains in 
the chest or belly ; slow breathing is perceived in cerebral affections 
and pulmonary emphysema. 
Deep Inspirations betoken advanced hvdrothorax; short ones, 
which constitute quick respiration, are signs of pleural or peritoneal 
pains. 
Difficult or Laborious Respiration characterizes acute 
laryngitis and bronchitis, pulmonary congestion, and all those 
cases in which obstacle in the air-passages, or other impediment, 
embarrasses the breathing. 
Unequal Respiration has one inspiration deep, another not. 
It becomes IRREGULAR where the intervals are unequal; INTER¬ 
MITTENT, when the breath is held or suspended; INTERRUPTED, 
when that suspension takes place in the middle of an inspiration or 
expiration ; INTERSCINDED, when suddenly arrested and converted 
into a convulsive action of the flanks or catching of the breath. 
This last is present in broken wind, but it is in particular charac¬ 
teristic of pulmonary emphysema, and diseases of the heart and 
pericardium. • 
The Expired Air is also worthy of our observation, as a far¬ 
ther test of the nature of the disease present. In all animals its 
temperature—ascertained by holding the hand before the nostrils— 
is a little below that of the body. In frequent respiration, sympa¬ 
thetic fever, bronchitis, and acute pneumony, the breath will be 
hot. In all chronic diseases, and particularly in tubercular 
phthisis and in pluerisy, both acute and chronic, it will be cold. 
The breath, inodorous in health, may, under disease of the air-pas¬ 
sages or lungs, acquire certain odours. In pharyngeal affections, 
in caries of the bones, and vomicce discharging through the bronchial 
tubes, the breath becomes fmtid; but in gangrene of the lungs even 
putrid in smell. 
PERCUSSION AND AUSCULTATION. 
?7)r years past both these means of exploration of the cavity of 
the thorax have been practised by veterinarians as tests of the 
presence of water : it is only, however, since the new and brilliant 
lights thrown upon the subject by the immortal Laennec that we, 
in common with surgeons, have derived much real advantage from 
them ; and even now it is only to the practised hand and ear of 
the man of accurate observation and multifold experience that per¬ 
cussion and auscultation will yield their full products. On this 
account I shall prefer giving the practice of a French author, Dela- 
fond, who appears to have had, and to have ])rofitcd by, extensive 
op])ortunities of observation, to relying upon any thing I might 
have to offer of my own. 
