PARALYSIS IN TIIE HORSE. 
3 
whole <c quarter ” was wet with cold perspiration, and thus it 
continued to be as long as the animal was allowed to live, 
which was until the fourth day after his admittance. The 
constant struggling, and the contusions caused thereby, toge¬ 
ther with his throwing his head violently on the floor, induced 
us to have him destroyed. 
We found, on making the post-viortem examination, that 
the thoracic and abdominal viscera were healthy, but that 
the muscles of the loins and leg of the side first affected were 
much paler and softer than natural. We could not, however, 
detect any other lesion of these organs, nor did we find any 
either of the bones, ligaments, or blood-vessels in this stage 
of our investigation. The spinal canal was next laid open, 
in doing which all the vertebrae w : ere carefully examined, but 
neither fracture, anchylosis, nor exostosis existed in any of 
them, nor could we detect anything abnormal in their struc¬ 
ture. In the interior of the canal, however, sufficient disease 
was discovered to account for the phenomena above named. 
From about the ninth dorsal vertebra to the middle of the 
sacrum the theca vertebralis was very much distended with a 
dark-coloured fluid, and on slitting it open, it proved to be 
of a sero-sanguineous nature, mixed with some partially 
broken-up clots of blood. From about the sixth dorsal ver¬ 
tebra to its termination, the spinal cord, with its dura-matral 
covering, presented a very singular appearance. Its surface 
was not only uneven, but it also varied in colour. In some 
places the dura mater apparently formed a tight ligature 
around the cord, while in other parts it seemed to have 
yielded to the enlarged contents, causing a bulging, and 
giving a nodulated character to the cord as a whole. In 
some places the dura mater had actually given way, allow¬ 
ing the diseased and broken-up nervous tissue and effused 
blood to escape beneath the arachnoid membrane. The 
cord itself, from the anterior part of the dorsal region to the 
end of the sacrum, was of a dirty-gray colour, and studded 
here and there with a number of eechymosed spots and 
streaks of effused blood. For a short distance it presented a 
yellowish-gray or greenish tint, denoting the presence of 
pus, which was found to exist in tolerably large quanti¬ 
ties. On examining the cord more particularly I was sur¬ 
prised to witness the completely broken-up state of its struc¬ 
ture. From about the eighth to the fifteenth dorsal vertebra 
it was so completely disorganized that scarcely a trace of its 
normal tissue could be detected. Many of the nodular 
enlargements before alluded to were, when cut into, found to 
consist of disorganized nerve-matter, mixed with effused and 
