CASES OF EMBOLISM OF THE POSTERIOR AORTA. 
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7 
The abdominal organs being removed, the abdominal aorta is 
found empty as far as the point of its quadrifurcation. At this 
point the internal face of the artery, which is thin, is found firmly 
adherent to a white plastic exudation, itself continued to a clot 
which, as we follow it in the iliac, increases in size. 
The internal iliac of the right side is completely filled. The 
external is partly so. The clot extends in the ramifications of 
these arteries, and seem, as in the first case, presenting characters 
of different ages of formation. At places it is hard, white, and 
well organized, at others of a redder color and softer. This coin 
dition is followed down the tibial region, the posterior tibial 
being also obliterated. 
The arteries of the left side are also diseased, but not to the 
same extent, the cavity of the arteries being only partly filled by 
the clot of blood. 
In looking over the record of the observations collected by 
Gfoubaux, published in 1840, and over those published since, we 
have found the lesions described corresponding more or less with 
those of this last case, but we believe that those of the first case 
have never been observed or recorded. 
If, now, we look at the length of time elapsing between the 
moment when the animals showed any signs of disease, (scarcely 
three weeks in the first case, if we count it from the day he re¬ 
turned from the country to the time of death, and about five 
weeks in the second;) and if we take into consideration the enor¬ 
mous lesions presented by those animals at the post mortem, in¬ 
dicative of a long standing of diseased process, much matter for 
thought will be offered to the pathologist and the practitioner. 
It will certainly remain a difficult matter to explain how (and this 
especially in the first case) an animal has been able to conserve 
all the appearances of health, to have remained free from all the 
ailments known to be the consequence of such lesions as those found 
at the great mesenteric artery, (repeated attacks of colic) or in the 
posterior aorta (paraplegia), and yet be affected with the disease of 
the circulatory system, which certainly must have been in existence 
for months before it became manifest and such as to need medical 
interference. 
