CEREBRO-SPINAL MENINGITIS 
473 
he becomes brighter, delirium ceases, and the intervals of coma 
are lessened; in nearly all cases he gains flesh while in the slings. 
Dr. Rogers, of Gloucester County, New Jersey, informs me that 
two of his cases, apparently progressing favorably towards recov¬ 
ery, died of true apoplexy ; in each instance the clot being thrown 
out at the base of the brain, and in one case, a horse aged nine¬ 
teen, producing in a beautiful manner the respiration similar to 
that seen after section of the pneumogastric. The paraplegia, 
which persists in many cases after the animal is otherwise restored 
to health, is the bugbear of American practitioners; it often lasts 
for months, resisting every method of treatment. 
Diagnosis .—This is sometimes beset with difficulties, as shown 
by the fact that cerebro-spinal meningitis, azoturia, and paraplegia 
were regarded as one and the same disease; but the diagnostic 
points have been pretty well settled by close and scientific obser¬ 
vation. Occasionally it may be confounded with the nervous 
form of influenza; the occurrence of convulsive fits, coma and 
lumbar weakness may be associated with real sore throat, cough, 
discharge from the eyes and nostrils, high pulse and temperature; 
such cases may most probably be referred to the specific blood- 
poison of influenza, acting more especially on the nervous system. 
Azoturia is frequently mistaken for it, but there is an absence of 
the hard and board-like condition of the gluteal and femoral mus- 
cles seen in the former disease. There is not the pain, the high 
febrile condition and excessive sweating over the hind quarters, 
as seen in azoturia. You may have bloody urine early and late 
in cerebro-spinal meningitis; the urine may be dark 
or loaded with urea or its analogues; but you will not find the 
coffee or chocolate-colored, thick, grumous discharge, loaded with 
albumen and often with casts, that you find in azoturia. The 
previous history of the case, the idleness and high feed, the fact 
that the animal frequently goes lame on one hind leg before 
showing the more acute paraplegic symptoms, together with the 
absence of that early onset of coma and difficulty in deglutition 
seen in cerebro-spinal meningitis—all these will help the care¬ 
ful practitioner to form a correct diagnosis. In paraplegia, 
again, we have high febrile condition and pain, very different 
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