OPENING OF THE RECTUM INTO THE BLADDER. 573 
Its autopsy— after slaughter—presented some remarkable 
peculiarities. The sacrum was not above half its usual length; 
not extending more than a third over the pelvic cavity, and 
being in fact hardly recognisable as the same bone. The 
coccygeal bones are wanting, or at most are represented only 
by a light irregular bone no larger than a nut. The rectum 
is in its ordinary position, and altogether normal, having its 
termination, where it perforates in an oblique direction, in the 
vagina, at nearly an inch in front of the superior commissure 
of the vulva. 
Opening of the Rectum into the Bladder . 
On the 29th of August, 1850, M. Vachez, farmer at Aney- 
le-Franc, begged me to look at a young calf, calved on the 
26th of the same month. A neighbour told me that my 
employer had suggested and made an incision through the 
skin, in the situation where the rectum by nature ought to 
have terminated. The animal appeared quite healthy and of 
ordinary size, and its parents were without defect. But 
there is no anus to be seen, the skin being continuous in the 
place where it should be, and covered with hair. A vertical 
incision has been made with a razor, with the intention of 
penetrating into the rectum. The animal keeps making con¬ 
tinually violent efforts to expel the contents of the rectum, 
but to no purpose. I introduced my finger into the artificial 
aperture that had been made, but could feel no traces of 
rectum. I with a bistoury penetrated deeper into the pelvis* 
but in vain. At last, in the act of placing the animal upon 
its back, with a view of continuing my exploration, my right 
hand came suddenly in contact with meconium; and I soon 
discovered that there was a quantity of it in a liquid state 
in the vicinity of the extremity of the sheath where the long 
hairs grow. This discovery rendered the diagnostic evident. 
The rectum opens either into the bladder or the urethra; though 
the latter supposition was rendered hardly tenable by the 
circumstance of the intestines now being discoverable through 
the former incision. 
I recommended Vachez to suckle the calf, and so prepare 
it for the butcher, in the hope that if faecal matters continued 
to be expelled along with the urine, life might be prolonged 
sufficiently to give it time to fatten into veal for the market. 
On the 3d of September I received notice that the calf was 
killed; since for four days it had taken nothing, and had 
suffered considerably. I went immediately, but still arrived 
almost too late, the butcher having already rendered all but 
