146 
REPORTS OF CASES. 
sure of the pectoral muscles and a constant dripping of fluid 
commenced and continued. Thin gruel was ordered kept before 
him, of which he partook sparingly ; yet seeming to suffer no 
inconvenience from what little he did swallow. 
Monday morning I was informed that the animal’s head 
and upper part of the neck was swollen enormously, and the 
dropping from the seton almost stopped ; in fact, suffocation 
was threatened. Not being able to visit the patient and presum¬ 
ing that the great swelling was due to holding the head so low, 
allowing almost all the serous effusion to gravitate to those parts, 
I ordered hot fomentations, and to tie the head up above the 
level of the breast, which in a short time caused the swelling to 
rapidly reduce, by the fluid gravitating down the neck and out 
by way of the seton. Tuesday morning I again saw the ani¬ 
mal ; the swelling was considerably less, and previous to my ar¬ 
rival he had eaten a few mouthfuls of hay. We offered him 
gruel, he attempted to swallow some, but apparently all he par¬ 
took of returned to the bucket through the nostrils ; he drank 
water with the same result. This had not happened at all be¬ 
fore ; for although drinking sparingly, all he drank seemed to 
stay down, so I presumed it due to the swelling pressing upon 
the oesophagus. On account of swelling I could find no pulse 
at jaw. The owner thought the colt tired, not having laid down 
for four days, and also, for reasons of my own I decided to 
throw him ; so buckling up a front foot and pulling the head 
around to the opposite side, after a few efforts to keep from fall¬ 
ing, the colt laid down. 
In a few seconds he made a few desperate efforts to regain 
his feet, when suddenly as if in a moment, a great change came 
over the animal; he laid flat on his side, mouth open gasping 
for breath ; breathing through the mouth, respirations hurried 
and heart so rapid we could not count the beats, and in a few 
moments, without a single other struggle, quietly died. 
Imagine my feelings ; the owner, his wife, sister and neigh¬ 
bors looking on. I must confess to feeling a little foolish, for 
with pulse, temperature, respirations and general appearance, I 
had not thought the patient at all dangerous, simply a bad bruise 
or a few ruptured fibres of a muscle. 
I decided to at once make an examination of the neck ; so, 
making an incision through the skin and swollen tissues at the 
place where the first soreness and swelling exhibited itself, I 
found the inferior border of the mastoido-humeralis muscle torn 
across (transverse) about two inches ; and in the cavity thus made 
