414 
L. ROSSIGNOL. 
place, a spark jumped towards the commutator, the current was 
stopped, but too late for the poor horse to be brought back to 
life. Respiration, which at first had stopped, returned deep, 
abdominal, at intervals more and more apart, the mucous 
membranes became pale, the pulse passed away ; he was dead. 
The two cadavers were removed to Alfort to have the autop¬ 
sies made as minutely as possible. When they arrived at the 
school the cadavers presented a rigidity rather remarkable for 
its rapid appearance; the external mucous membranes were 
slightly cyanotic. 
The first horse showed marks of beginning of burnings, but 
without subcutaneous ecchymosis. The peritoneal cavity and 
the peritoneum were normal ; nothing peculiar in the stomach; 
the small intestines showed remarkable lesions ; most of its cir¬ 
cumvolutions were sound,yellowish in coloration,with numerous 
folds of the mucous membrane, but in many, on the contrary, the 
coats of the organ were soft, thin, without folds, and with a rosy 
coloration due to the dilatation of the capillaries. The paraly¬ 
sis seemed to have involved not only the blood vessels, but also 
the unstriated muscles of the coats of the organ. The large 
colon, the caecum, the floating colon, the mesenteric glands were 
normal, as well as the liver. Pancreas, superenal capsules ; the 
spleen only was perhaps a little bigger than usual. 
The left kidney was gorged with blood, while the right was 
normal—probably this was due to the position the horse laid in 
when transported to Alfort. 
In the thoracic cavity the costal pleura was normal; the vis¬ 
ceral was reddened by alteration of the blood. Nothing pecul¬ 
iar in the pulmonary parenchyma. 
The heart had stopped in diastole, and was gorged with , 
blood. There were few petechise under the pericardium. 
The blood was asphyxic ; bluish, dark, viscous, coagulates no 
more, does not redden to the air. That explains the red tint 
of almost all. the parenchymas. 
Towards the nervous system, there was nothing to notice, 
notwithstanding a most careful dissection of the marrow and of 
