LIVERPOOL VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
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same manner as an artery, and forms the afferent vessels of the 
liver, the capillaries, and finally the efferent vessels, or hepatic 
veins, which flow into the vena cava. 
The object of this is evidently to slacken the flow of blood, 
and to increase the surface of transudation. But we must pass 
on to notice the reasoning by which this anatomical theory is 
supported. 
Notwithstanding the number and elaborateness of experiments 
and physiological laws adduced in support of the auaemic nature 
of this disease, not one single proof from autopsies has been 
produced, if it is possible to discover or demonstrate an anaemic 
condition of the brain post-mortem. 
All practical men agree in considering it a matter of great 
difficulty to reconcile with any certainty the morbid appearances 
found in the brain with the symptoms observed during life. 
Many die with undoubted apoplectic symptoms when nothing 
has been found but congestion of the vessels of the scalp, the 
membranes, or the brain itself, and sometimes not even that, 
but if it were of an anaemic nature from any cause it should be 
determined more easily. 
Anaemia is ordinarily recognised by the blanched and blood¬ 
less condition of the system generally or of the organs in¬ 
volved. I have sometimes thought that the brain and nervous 
system in this disease presented a normal appearance, so that 
one might be led to infer that such might be the condition 
inducing these symptoms. But latterly I have found well- 
marked cases of congestion, extravasation, and even clots, on the 
brain, and congestion of the meninges, so that I am inclined to 
question the correctness of the anaemic theory, Mr. Fleming, 
however, maintains that this very congestion we find is the result 
of the hyperaemia leading to oedema, and when this occurs 
anaemia sets in, in consequence of the oedema causing contrac¬ 
tion of the blood-vessels, and prevents the further supply of 
arterial blood to the brain; this is aided by the heart's 
hyperplasia and the hydraemia which, he says, exists in all preg¬ 
nant animals. Well, I am not prepared to maintain that anaemia 
does not occur under such conditions, and that it is not the 
pathological conditions present in parturient apoplexy. But I 
humbly submit that we would require better proof than that 
afforded by experiments on living animals in the production of 
epileptic attacks and spasms, arising from an anaemic condition 
of the brain induced by bleeding an animal to death, or the in¬ 
jection of water into the carotids, as performed by Bidder and 
Mienk in the production of eclampsia, before we can accept it as 
the cause of the phenomena observed in this disease, or the true 
theory thereof. A theory to be true must be consistent with the 
