ORGANIC LESION OF THE PYLORUS IN THE HORSE. 451 
of it, while the cardia becomes dilated into the form of a 
funnel. Dilatation of the cardia once established, there 
remains no longer the obstacle to the passage through it of 
the alimentary matter, which most authors who have written 
on the subject regard as furnishing the reason why a horse 
cannot perform an act so facile to most other animals, viz. 
vomit. When this becomes the condition of parts, the act is 
for the first time performed through the contraction of the 
abdominal parietes alone, favoured by the straightened 
rigidity (direction imprimee) of the neck. 
In this manner it is, according to the learned veterinarian 
just cited, that we are to account for the dilatation of the 
cardia, a principal, if not an indispensable, element in the 
possibility of vomition. Such dilatation may exist but for a 
time, as in cases of vomition followed by recovery; but in 
the case before us it was otherwise. 
We can readily imagine that the repetition of such phe¬ 
nomena for any length of time would end in complete and 
confirmed paralysis of the stomach. Without a permanent 
dilatation of the cardia, which had been impossible without 
established paralysis of its fleshy fibres, we could hardly 
explain the facility, and in particular the frequency, with 
which the animal vomited. 
To resume. The pyloric lesion sets up an obstacle to the 
passage of the digested matters out of the stomach, whose 
parietes in consequence become distended to the extremest 
limits of their elasticity; out of which distension, as well as 
from repeated and sustained though ineffectual contractions 
of the muscular coat paralysis, temporary at first, arises, 
ending in dilatation of the cardia, from which moment the 
animal is able to vomit: all which ends in perpetuality of 
these phenomena ;—the pyloric obstacle continuing, paralysis 
without doubt sets in shortly after, which will explain the 
frequency and facility of the vomitions. 
As will have been perceived, it is by the aid of the most 
favorably received theory at the present day that we have 
endeavoured to interpret a pathological fact which we commit 
to the meditations of our colleagues. To us it has the appear¬ 
ance of being incontestible evidence of the theory; indeed, 
it seems to set it in that plain daylight that henceforth it 
will be all but impossible to reject the theory without deny¬ 
ing the fact .—Recueil de Med . Vet,, March 1852, 
