INFLAMMATION OF THE VEIN. 
437 
I hope, therefore, that I shall be excused for occupying your 
pages with a few observations upon this subject, and calling 
the attention of your readers to the consideration of a disorder, 
from the treatment of which reputation may not unfrequently 
be gained or lost. 
Of the causes of inflammation of the vein, I have little to add 
to what is laid down by those who have previously written on 
the subject; I must, however, remark, that in the country the 
majority of cases which occur in the summer (the most fruitful 
season of the disease) are brought on by the practice of turning 
horses out immediately or very shortly after they have been 
bled, frequently with the pin remaining through the orifice. 
Either the almost continual depending position of the head in 
grazing, the irritation to the orifice, and the consequent rubbing 
of the neck, or these causes conjoined, I consider to be the 
most common progenitors of this species of phlebitis. I was 
ten minutes ago called from this writing to see a case of this 
description : the horse was bled ten days ago by my assistant, 
who directed that he should be kept in till the neck had got 
well; notwithstanding this, next morning the horse was turned 
out, with the pin in, and no notice taken of the matter for two 
or three days, when he was found with a sore neck, and he has 
now a vein slightly inflamed, with a disposition to hemorrhage 
from the orifice. 
That scientific veterinary writer Mr. Percivall, in his Lec¬ 
tures on the Veterinary Art,’* and again in his more recent 
work Hippopathology,” has the following observation : “ I shall 
now make mention of, and endeavour afterwards to account for, 
a circumstance which at first view appears so singular, that it 
has hitherto, I believe, baffled all attempts to explain it, viz. 
why inflammation of the jugular vein in the horse should extend , 
itself towards the head, contrary to the course of the circulation ; 
while the same disease in the human arm invades the vein as it 
proceeds to the heart.’’ Mr. P. then very ingeniously sets about 
to explain this extraordinary phenomenon. The same doctrine, 
that inflammation of the jugular vein in the horse proceeds only 
in one direction towards the head, is, or at all events was, held 
by our talented and much respected Professor Mr. Coleman, 
and, I believe, by most veterinary writers, and is, in fact, received 
nearly as an axiom in the profession. It is, therefore, with great 
diffidence, and only impelled by an anxious wish that the prin¬ 
ciples of our profession should be as correct as may be, that I 
state, that, so far as my observation and experience go, inflam¬ 
mation of the vein of the horse’s neck after bleeding extends in 
each direction below as well as above the orifice ; and even in 
VOL. Vin. o 
