238 
A CASE OF RAMOLLISSEMENT 
with a hot perspiration—the breathing laborious, sighing, irregu¬ 
lar, but in general quick; the pulsations at the artery were diffi¬ 
cult to count—they were from 70 to 80 per minute. The horse, 
when left to himself on his well-littered bed, and in a horizontal 
position, was continually changing his place as he pawed with 
his feet, and moved round from the left to the rig^ht. The fore 
legs were oftener and more violently moved than the hind ones. 
From the time that he fell he had not dunged, although many 
injections had been thrown up. 
I endeavoured in vain to raise him. He seemed to feel no 
pain from the blows of the pitchfork, which were applied to 
various parts of him : yet at every blow his limbs and his neck 
contracted as if he had experienced an electrical shock, or as if, 
being in a manner dead, we had excited the spinal cord, or some 
of the nerves proceeding from it. 
I attempted a new bleeding at the jugular and the coccygeal 
arteries, but did not obtain more than a pint and a half of blood. 
The arterial blood was of a deep red colour: the venous blood 
was nearly black, and very thick; it ran more slowly than the 
arterial blood, although the orifice in the vein was much larger 
than that in the artery. I again administered injections of soap 
and w'ater. 
At eight o’clock in the morning the horse was in the same 
state, except that his sensibility was still more weakened, as were 
also the muscular contractions. 
1 administered two ounces of aloes, and the juice of four large 
onions* in a bottle of water. The drink fell down the oesophagus 
as through a mechanical and not a living canula. 
During the whole of the 2]st and 22d there was no other 
change in the symptoms than increasing diminution of nervous 
power and of muscular contractions. There had not yet been 
any evacuation. 
On the morning of the 23d he died without any convulsions. 
He was opened almost immediately after death. The thoracic 
and abdominal viscera appeared to be perfectly healthy. The 
alimentary tube contained well-digested food, of its usual ap¬ 
pearance and consistence; the outside of the brain w^as sound, 
and, when that organ was cut, no lesion was discovered. 
* The juice of the onions was administered at the request of the owner, who 
regarded it as a very active and prompt evacuant. He very often used this 
remedy, he told me, when any of his horses appeared to be too much blown 
out; and when they had eaten too much, or their stools were not so fre¬ 
quent as in health. He believed that he had prevented many attacks of in¬ 
digestion by the administration of the juice of the onion. He also gave it, 
and he thought with advantage, in cases of colic. 
