398 
INTERNAL HEMORRHAGE. 
Mr. Herapath of Bristol had been communicated with on 
the subject, and he wrote back to say that he required certain 
parts of the digestive organs, and their contents; among 
which was to be a part of the contents of the second (?) 
stomach , not the bread basket .” 
As Mr. Nixon had left for London, I was requested by 
the manager to forward Mr. Herapath what he wanted, and 
also to furnish him with an account of the post-mortem ap¬ 
pearances. I sent a portion of the stomach and its contents, 
with some of the contents of one of the large intestines. 
He wrote back to say that he found the contents of the 
stomach and intestine strongly acid—indeed that they con¬ 
tained as much sulphuric acid as would account for death. 
He added that this agent was sometimes administered to 
horses by ignorant persons to give the animals a glossy coat. 
He also stated that there was sufficient to account for death 
independent of the acid, as the post-mortem examination 
had shown. 
The history of the case, as far as I was able to learn it 
from the farrier whom the company keeps to attend their 
horses, was as follows :—The horse was to all appearance well 
enough when he was put into the stable at night, and 
nothing was observed wrong with him until eleven or twelve 
o’clock, when he was noticed to be suffering from abdominal 
pain. The farrier had given a pint of castor-oil in com¬ 
bination with an ounce of tincture of opium, but without 
benefit, as the animal continued in great pain, with very 
slight intermissions, until the morning, when he died. The 
other horses, I was told, had all been taken ill, and died in 
the same way. They had been worked very hard for some 
days previously to their death. Very often they don’t get 
good usage when at work, as the men who drive them have 
nothing to do with either cleaning or feeding them. 
I confess that, notwithstanding Mr. Herapath’s report, I 
am still an unbeliever in sulphuric acid being the cause of 
death. If it had been given, some evidence of this must 
have been shown in the mouth or oesophagus; or, supposing 
it could have been given in the form of a ball, this would have 
been dissolved in the stomach, and acted on its mucous 
coat. 
My opinion is, that death arose from internal haemorrhage. 
Farriers, horsekeepers, and others, give large quantities of 
flowers of sulphur, and sulphuret of antimony, as alteratives 
—could such by any chemical change be converted into sul¬ 
phuric acid in the horse's intestines ? With regard to the 
dose of sulphuric acid ; I have frequently given cattle from 
