90 TRACHEOTOMY IN A COW. 
come obstructed. I took it out and cleansed it, and she was 
again relieved. 
2Sth .—The cow having been so long ill, has, by this time, lost 
much of her flesh, and the owner is disposed to part with her. 
I intimated to him that I thought the case was a rare one, and 
that, in order to satisfy myself of its real nature, I would give as 
much for her as any one else. He accordingly sold her to me, 
and I brought her to my stables. I again examined her; but 
could not find any thing more than I had done before. I then 
introduced a seton, as nearly as possible to what I consi¬ 
dered the principal seat of disease, round the trachea, and be¬ 
tween the trachea and the gullet, and as nearly as possible to the 
commencement of both. 1 dressed the setons with two parts of 
spirit of turpentine and four of pale oil, and applied the same 
all round the throat, at the same time giving some internal me¬ 
dicine. I continued this treatment ten days, when the cow was 
so much improved that I thought she might recover. We went 
on eight days more, at the expiration of which she did not ap¬ 
pear to be so well. 
By this time I began to be a little tired of m}'- patient, and 
also to despair of effecting much good. Nevertheless, as it so 
happened that her keep cost me but little, I still continued to 
dress the setons, and to embrocate the throat. The cow always 
ruminated, but ate little, apparently fiom the difficulty and pain 
of swallowing. At the end of ten weeks I destroyed her. 
On post-mortem examination, I found, near the entrance of 
the trachea and throat, a ball of grains, about the size of a hen’s 
egg, and about two inches from the entrance into these tubes. 
It was as hard as it was possible for the inflation and pressure of 
the tubes to make it—about a middle line between the trachea and 
the throat, and rather on the off side, firmly covered and closed in 
at least half an inch within the muscles and integuments of the 
parts, and no orifice remaining. There was, likewise, an ulcer 
in the left lobe of the lungs, about the size of a man’s double 
fist, and containing a very dark-coloured foetid matter. The 
other viscera were heathy. 
[Our correspondent has unknowingly but most correctly de¬ 
scribed a case of the presence of foreign bodies in one of the 
guttural pouches in cattle. It is a disease of rare occurrence in 
cattle, because the cavities are comparatively small in these 
animals. The cause of the entrance of these bodies has never 
been satisfactorily stated : possibly some violent effort at swallow¬ 
ing too great a portion of food—possibly violent coughing dur¬ 
ing the act of deglutition. Inflammation is speedily set up, 
