24 
TUMOUR IN THE LATERAL VENTRICLE. 
functions; so that it is not so much a matter of surprise 
that symptoms during life, significant of serious lesions of 
the organ, should present no visible traces of them upon 
dissection, as at a first view may appear. Epilepsy, when 
the subject of it dies during the fit, may present no visible 
cause whatever upon dissection. The congestion observed is 
the result of dying in the fit, and owing to suspended 
respiration during the paroxysm. Of this, I think, there 
can be little doubt. 
To reflect and annotate upon the functions and disorders 
of the brain, is to me a pleasing occupation ; and I find the 
subject has led me already beyond the limits of your valuable 
journal, I therefore conclude with a few cursory remarks on 
the case of tumour in the lateral ventricle of the cart-horse. 
Previous observations have explained the principal objects 
of it, and rendered enlarging upon it unnecessary. This 
horse was never known to have been amiss up to the time 
of his sudden seizure on the 3d February, 1845; and there 
can be no doubt that the attack of apoplexy on this occasion 
was brought on by the description or kind of food he had 
eaten ; the retention of it in the stomach, constipation of 
the bowels, and working in this condition, producing con¬ 
gestion of the brain. This opinion seems confirmed by the 
relief experienced on restoring the action of the stomach 
and bowels ; the horse appearing, on the third day, quite 
well. And I do think that, if the horse had been properly 
dieted, the period between the first and second seizure would 
have been greatly prolonged, the tumour apparently sharing 
but little in the production of it beyond facilitating or 
accelerating the congestive state of the brain. That the 
distension of the stomach and bowels with food of difficult 
digestion, opposing the action of the diaphragm in enlarging 
the chest, impeding the circulation of the blood through the 
heart and lungs, and consequently obstructing the return of 
blood from the head, and that at a time when the stomach 
was abstracting from the brain more than usual of its vital 
energy to relieve the oppression from the food within it, was 
the real cause of the congestion, and this of the attack of 
apoplexy, is clear and apparent. 
In the second attack the pressure upon the corpora striata 
and thalami optici, from the combined force of sanguineous 
accumulation, and the tumour was greater, and the conse¬ 
quent torpidity much more considerable, than in the one 
previous. No relief being obtained from the treatment, the 
torpidity extended to the medulla oblongata, put a stop to the 
respiratory movement, and was the immediate cause of death. 
