ON ALTERATIONS OF THE BLOOD. 
287 
alterations of the blood in our domestic animals, reserving to him¬ 
self, at some future time, the extension of this important subject 
to every point on which it bears. 
He thus divides his subject:— 
I. —MALADIES OF THE BLOOD ATTRIBUTABLE TO THE QUANTITY 
OF THIS FLUID IN THE VESSELS, AND THE RESPECTIVE 
PROPORTIONS OF THE GLOBULES AND THE SERUM. 
1. Maladies attributable to the abundance of Blood, and the 
great proportion of its globules. 
Polyhemie (tsoKv cufj^cc), much blood. Undeu this name the 
author describes a peculiar state of the constitution, which has con¬ 
siderable analogy to that which old writers designate under the 
name of plethora, and which consists, according to him, in an abun¬ 
dance of blood containing a too great quantity of globules. 
The animals that happen to be in this particular state are sub¬ 
ject to various kinds of apoplexies, the situation of which varies, 
and which are developed in them in some measure spontaneously, 
and without any other apparent cause than the quantity and the 
quality of the blood. These congestions, he says, ought not to be 
confounded with those which owe their origin to other causes. 
We will see, says M. Bouley, whether this opinion is well 
founded. “ Polyhemie is determined by food having a great pro¬ 
portion of nutritive principles, which give to the blood a great 
quantity of fibrino-albuminous and cruoric materials at the expense 
of the natural quantity of serum.” 
This assertion, which is founded on observation and experience, 
will not find any contradictors, especially among veterinary sur¬ 
geons. We have long known that oats, and especially wheat and 
barley, given in too great quantities to horses, disposes them to that 
inflammatory affection or congestion of the vessels of the foot known 
by the name of founder (fouydure), and that vetches and beans have 
occasioned in the same animals those peculiar intestinal congestions 
known by the name of red-colic. 
We will refrain from extracts which w’e could easily multiply, 
and follow our author in the development of his opinion as to the 
causes of polyhemie. In order that the action of cerealious and 
leguminous seeds on animals may be better comprehended, M. De- 
lafond reminds us that chemical analyses have proved that these 
seeds contain a great quantity of gluten and vegetable albumen, 
and substances which contain much azote; and he adds, that expe¬ 
rience has proved that these substances, associated with a very 
small quantity of the water of vegetation, render the chyle first, 
