514 
SPLENIC APOPLEXY. 
the malady generally showed itself during the summer months 
in districts where there was a large tract of low-lying land, 
which, for want of under-draining, yielded deleterious gases, 
from the operation of the sun’s rays upon the decaying 
vegetable matter. But opposed to this view was the fact 
that, in the cases to which he should presently refer, the 
animals were attacked on pastures which were in every respect 
like others on which they remained healthy, and from which 
they were separated merely by ordinary ditches. It was on 
two pastures in particular on two farms, comprising about 300 
acres of land each, that the disease had shown itself. He could - 
not find here any cause which would lead to the supposition 
that malaria had anything to do with the matter. Again, if he -~ 
took a more extended view, and looked at attacks of the disease 
in other districts, he should find these often occurring in winter, 
among animals being prepared for the butcher, fed largely 
on mangel-wurzel, oilcake, &c., and kept consequently under ^ 
circumstances favorable to the continuance of health. 
Another source of mischief was the direct conveyance into 
the digestive organs of materials detrimental to the making 
cf pure blood, either in the shape of food or of water. We 
were often enabled to trace blood diseases directly to the 
food; but when he came to examine the cases in question, he 
could not find anything that would justify him in saying that 
materials of a poisonous nature had entered into the organism 
of the animals, and had excited a fermentive action in the blood.— 4 
Professor Buckman would go more at length into this part of 
the subject, and would show the nature and character of the 
herbage in these particular fields. His own remarks had 
reference merely to the fact that in the careful examination 
which he had originally made he had failed to detect any poi¬ 
sonous plants in the pastures. 
Water entered largely into the composition of the blood. 
There were no less than 784 parts of water in every 1000 parts 
of blood ; and, as water often held in solution a variety of 
materials, and went directly, so to express it, into the vessels 
from the intestinal canals, by the simple law of endosmosis, 
it followed that matters detrimental to the blood might be 
thus conveyed into the system, and induce certain changes 
in the composition and character of the blood which might 
prove fatal to the life of the animal. In the district in question 
^.he found that the water was strongly impregnated with sul¬ 
phuretted hydrogen. 
He would now pass from this particular case to another, in 
border to show how water, or rather a want of it, might induce 
this disease. Two years ago he was consulted respecting an 
