528 
EXTRACTS FROM EXCHANGES. 
mitted. But inasmuch as I had to carry the finger in 4 c.cm. in 
order to reach the eyeball—so excessively swollen were the eye¬ 
lids—the silk handkerchief not being slippery but adhering, as 
silk will do to everything except the foreign body, only hindered 
me in the attainment of my object. After repeated failures I 
removed the body with my index finger. Some authors advise 
the use of pincers, paper rolled tightly together in the form of a 
cylinder with a bulbous end, and other artificial means. In this 
case, the extreme inflammation, swelling of the lids, depth of the 
eyeball from the surface, the inability to properly see the eye¬ 
ball, much more the extreme irritability and spasm of the parts, 
would have rendered such methods inappropriate, inasmuch as 
they would have added to the danger of injuring the already ex¬ 
tremely inflamed parts, the danger of blind groping practically 
inaccessible to such artificial attempts. The index finger (tactus 
erriditis) is the best instrument here. I would like to state fur¬ 
ther that, not knowing the nature of the case until my arrival, 
I removed the body without cocaine—( Schweiz . Archiv. fur 
Thierhlk .) 
Hydramnion a Decided Cause of Rigidity of the Cer¬ 
vix in A Cow.—The causes of cervical rigidity are the follow¬ 
ing : 1. Various degrees of torsion of the uterus. 2. Hyper¬ 
trophy of the cervix. 3. Cicatrized cervical rents. 4. Targe 
tumors in the cervix or its locality. 5. Rupture of the uterus. 
6. Excessive liquor amnii. I shall only discuss the last cause. 
An old cow with a decided bilateral uterine swelling had had 
labor pains for 20 hours, when the pains gave out. Upon 
vaginal and rectal examination, I found a large degree of hy¬ 
dramnion ; the cervix drawn high up into the pelvis, the os 
uteri tightly contracted, and hard to reach by the finger; the 
udder was swollen and filled with colostrum. The uterine ac¬ 
tions were feeble, as were to be expected from such a condition 
of affairs ; for the uterine layers—especially the circular and 
longitudinal muscular fibres—were so stretched by the exces¬ 
sive liquor amnii, that they were temporarily paralyzed and could 
no longer exert their contractile powers, consequently the bag 
of waters could not be pressed into the cervix and act as the 
natural cervical dilator. 
Nothing of the foetus could be felt owing to the large quan¬ 
tity of liquor amnii. I therefore resorted to manual dilatation 
of the cervix, boring the middle finger through the external and 
internal os ; this accomplished I bored through the amniotic sac, 
let off an enormous quantity of fluid and then dilated the cer- 
