ON WOUNDS PENETRATING INTO THE CHEST. 
129 
In experimenting with this instrument, which was very sharp, 
and which was not more than six lines wide at the part which 
penetrated from two to five inches into the lung, we remarked, 
that sometimes we had w'ounded a small bronchial tube alone, 
and at other times only a bloodvessel. In the first case the ani¬ 
mal soon began to breathe with difficulty, and exhibited all the 
symptoms of broken wind. Always there escaped from the nos¬ 
tril a little bloody fluid, but this lasted only during a few instants. 
The difficulty of breathing likewise disappeared in two or three 
days. This difficulty of breathing arose in some measure, we 
thought, from partial pulmonary emphysema, of which some 
traces remained at the examination after death ; and, in some 
measure also, from the presence of a small quantity of blood in 
the bronchi, which had assumed a spumous character. 
The simple wound of a vessel of somewhat considerable size 
produces less derangement of the respiratory functions; but these 
derangements continue during a longer time : we have watched 
them as many as ten days, and they had not entirely ceased when 
the horse was destroyed. On examination after death, we found 
a bloody infiltration of ten inches in diameter, and which had its 
seat in the interlobular cellular tissue. A vein as large as a goose 
quill had been cut entirely through. We did not find any blood 
in the pectoral cavity, and the pulmonary wound w'as entirely 
closed by a yellow clot, offering in some points cruoric masses. 
The interlobular interstices did not contain any more pure blood, 
but in the direction of the wound there was a yellow fibrous sub¬ 
stance, with, here and there, points of a deep red. 
After having introduced our cutting instrument, straight and 
pointed, to a depth of two inches only, we gave it a sawing mo¬ 
tion, and very soon divided a sufficient number of bloodvessels 
and bronchi to produce a bronchial hemorrhage that soon de¬ 
stroyed the animal, especially when a direction was given to the 
instrument perpendicular to the vessels and the bronchi. 
Wounds effected with large instruments, as a keen sabre, were 
always accompanied by hemorrhage, whether bronchial or pleu¬ 
ral. These hemorrhages w'ere great in proportion as the wound 
was accompanied by the introduction of air into the chest; we are 
enabled to state this from having left the wound open during 
several seconds. We have never seen the horse survive this com¬ 
plication of mischief two days. The horse that lived the longest 
had both a bronchial and pleural hemorrhage, but the bronchial 
hemorrhage was not very great, nor did it endure long enough to 
produce sudden death. 
The following case proves that the introduction of air into the 
wound had great influence on the bleeding;—We had plunged a 
VOL. VIII. T 
